Ashes to Ashes
by slytherinish
Summary: Borgin & Burkes is under investigation, and Harry is the Auror put on the case.  When he finds out Malfoy is the shop's new owner, he's thrown into an unexpected game of wits, and he isn't sure he can win. COMPLETED.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, obviously, because if I did, I wouldn't be looking for a job. I'd be on an island somewhere, with a drink and a tiny umbrella.

AN: This story contains slash. A lot of slash. If that's not your cup of tea, I suggest you turn back now. :] This story was not inspired by anything other than Harry Potter and any references to other existing films or books are completely accidental or coincidental. I hope you enjoy this fic because I really enjoy writing it!

.oOo.

"Are you prepared for the unexpected?"

That was the first question asked of him before he'd started work as an Auror, and he still isn't entirely sure of the answer. The fact that he is currently standing in front of Borgin & Burkes and preparing to confront Draco Malfoy for the first time in five years would suggest, of course, that the answer is a resounding _no_.

He's not even sure if he can call it _confronting_ him, as he's been standing on the front stoop for the past five minutes, trying to work up the nerve to go inside. He could stay where he was, waxing poetical to the wooden door about their past for a good five minutes more, and actually, that would be far preferable to saying it to anyone else. At least the door can't talk back.

With one final deep breath, one more lecture on being a _man_… whatever the hell that means… he charges into the dark artifacts shop with a great deal more charisma than has ever crossed its threshold before, even if it _is_ forced. They can coexist in the same space, surely, and honestly, he's acting like they're ex-lovers with the way he keeps going on… a fact Hermione has already helpfully pointed out.

The boy-who-lived-twice stands for a moment in the dark shop, thoroughly disoriented, before Malfoy appears in front of him, having apparently materialized out of the valley of the shadow of death. Or perhaps the back room of the shop. He thinks perhaps they might just be the same thing.

"Potter," he drawls. He notices right away that his hair hasn't faded at all, not one bit, since he last saw him. If anything, it's _brighter_, which isn't all that surprising considering the last time he saw him, he was covered in soot and blood. He looks good, he assesses, before realizing he shouldn't be assessing any such thing. Still, he can't help but notice that he has the sleeves of his crisp white button-up pushed up to his elbows and is clearly not trying to hide any… _scars_. Harry is met with the sight of the same snake and skull motif that still looms out of the corner of his eye at times, like a ghost that just won't die. "Potter, if you came to compare scars, I can assure you… mine are bigger."

"Er…" His words seem to have already deserted him, the traitors, and he's left blinking unsteadily at his old childhood enemy.

"Quite. You're late. I was told you'd be here…" he checks his imaginary watch, "five minutes ago, which I'd imagine you would have been, had you not been too busy getting acquainted with my door."

Harry flushes a bit though stands a bit straighter, because he's being an absolute fool. He's twenty-three years old, and… perhaps no wiser than he had been five years prior… but surely both of them can move on past childhood grudges. Eventually.

"Borgin & Burkes is under investigation by the Ministry of Magic, Malfoy. I will be conducting a thorough appraisal of this shop over the next month which, according to our records, you are currently the sole proprietor of? Is that correct?"

His grey eyes darken considerably, a bit like the sky before a thunderstorm. Harry isn't sure he wants to stick around for _that_, because if Malfoy's temperament is anything like it was in school, it's less likely to be a storm and more likely to be a stage five hurricane. "Yes, that's right. What, might I ask, is the investigation in reference to?"

_You know_, Harry wants to shout. He wants Malfoy to make this easy, to provide him with the evidence, so they can both return to their own lives which don't include each other.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss it." He begins a slow walk around the edges of the shop and stops to peer closer at a jar of what appears to be shriveled, human fingernails. "But consider yourself, and Borgin & Burkes, on thin ice. Or, if you prefer, probation." He's getting a small kick out of being top dog in this conversation, when the blonde had always seemed to hold the higher ground when they'd been in school. Then he has to chide himself for being immature, and for _caring_ about their silly childhood rivalry that should have ceased to matter after the third, or perhaps the fourth, time he saved Malfoy's life.

But who's counting?

The shop owner's face flushes for a moment, a tinge of pink that creeps over his white collar and Harry finds himself momentarily entranced by it. Did Malfoys ever allow themselves to seem embarrassed? Surely that goes against some kind of code. Surely he'll be struck down by lightning within seconds.

_Here's hoping_, he thinks childishly.

"I see," he murmurs. "It's odd, Potter… quite odd that the Prophet seems to be privy to this information and not the person it convicts. Your friends at the paper don't seem to have much regard for your liberties and what they do or do not include."

Harry has a moment where he thinks seriously about coming back with a childish, _then why'd you ask if you already know_… but he thinks better of it. "What do your investigations involve? Or shall I stand idly by while you fraternize with the inanimate objects in this shop? You seem to be quite adept at that already. I don't think you'll need the whole month for it." Harry realizes belatedly that he is indeed staring rather fixedly at a nearby lamp.

"A month of on-the-job observations. Congratulations, you've just earned yourself a new employee. Malfoy, this can be simple, or this can be very difficult. It's entirely up to you but at the end of the month, it's me who gets to decide if you're fit for this job." He pauses. "You narrowly escaped Azkaban once already. Let's not tempt fate twice."

The blonde's fingers inch toward his wand and Harry sees it, though makes no move for his own. Malfoy is many things, but a fool is not one of them, and he won't pull his wand on an Auror in public. "You're just the same as you've always been."

"Well, here's hoping."

"And smug as ever," Malfoy offers.

"Wow. Pot, meet kettle," Harry returns sagely.

He's met unexpectedly with a dry smile, though it _does_ somehow seem good-natured in a strange, Malfoyish way. He imagines it would be the same look a snake might give whilst finding something humorous, which he thinks is an assessment Malfoy would be quite pleased with. "Indeed. I have to say you're wasting your time here."

"I hope so, Malfoy," and Harry is surprised to find that he means it. He doesn't want to ruin his life. In fact, he never has. It seems regardless of how he feels about it, for the moment, Malfoy seems to have conveniently forgotten his earlier half-threat concerning jail time.

.oOo.

_One week earlier…_

After decades of suspecting Borgin & Burkes of it, the Aurors had finally sniffed out a lead suggesting that they had been involved in some way with the smuggling of illicit potions into England. Some of the potions act as narcotics, though others have magic-dampening effects. The rest are opiates, which had hit the streets a few months before Harry's arrival on the shop's doorstep. Ron was the one who had caught one of the Knockturn Alley dealers, who had cracked under pressure and informed them that he had gotten the potions from an underhanded deal with one of the shops in the area.

Borgin & Burkes is the only shop who imports from any of the countries the potions are brewed in, which means they are the only shop with the capabilities to smuggle the potions into England discretely.

The facts are quite simple and yet, quite complicated when laid side by side. Harry has gone over them too many times to count and each time, they get caught around each other, creating impossible knots and snares that he can't unravel no matter how hard he tries. Or indeed, how _long_ he tries. After taking the case to the Wizengamut, they had assessed that there wasn't enough hard evidence. They had decided that Harry was the one to go out and find it.

One hour later, he finds himself in the Head Auror's office.

Astrid Blackwell is a tough old bird who rules her department with an iron fist and the demeanor of a battle-ax. As he steps into her office, she doesn't pay him so much as a cursory glance and he eyes the chair which – he sits – is just as uncomfortable as it looks. "Mr. Potter. It is my understanding that there is some bad blood between you and Mr. Malfoy." It's clearly a statement, not a question.

"Er… Well, I really can't see it getting in the way of the investigation…"

"Oh please, save the act for someone who can't see through it. I want that bad blood to seep into every crevice of this investigation. Let it affect your every question, your every instinct. Not getting the Malfoys convicted has been my greatest failure as head of this department. Do we understand each other?"

"Uh…" Harry is, as usual, very eloquent.

"Good. Now, believe me, your age has not been forgotten. You are young, but you have much to gain from finding me that evidence." Her voice is clipped and callous and Harry doesn't know what to say. The implications are clear, because as an Auror, there is only one thing to gain from this and it is her office space once she retires in the fall.

It's a nice space as far as spaces go, but it's clearly the placard nailed to the door that is worth the most. Hell, nailed to a broom cupboard door, it would still be worth more than any other within the Ministry walls, barring the Minister's himself.

But these days, Harry only makes promises he knows he can keep. "If there is any evidence, rest assured, I will find it." This seems to appease her – for the moment, anyway – and she gives him a curt nod before lowering her head to peer at whatever document is on her desk. The only thing he can see of her is the top of her silvery white bob. He decides this must be his dismissal.

It takes all of his willpower not to sprint out of range. He may have vanquished the Dark Lord, but it is his greying boss who is a hundred pounds soaking wet (a disturbing mental image) who frightens him the most.

.oOo.

After getting… reacquainted with Malfoy, Harry shows up the next day with a grim determination and doesn't hesitate at the door lest he suffer under the blonde's mocking humor for his entire first shift as Borgin & Burkes newest employee. The first face he is greeted with is not Malfoy's pale, sharp visage but rather, a bubbly looking brunette with softly curled hair and a mouth that looks like it doesn't know how to stop smiling.

"Well, Draco told me we'd be graced with your celebrity presence soon." She grinned. "His words, not mine."

Harry is stunned. This must be Malfoy's… girlfriend? fiancé? who Harry, of course, would not have ever met. The last he'd heard about Malfoy was that his father had bought Borgin & Burkes from Borgin himself a few years past, causing much speculation about their motives. They were, of course, under question once again much to Rita Skeeter's unquestionable joy. "Who are you?" is his brilliant response.

He sees the hair before he hears the man it belongs to. Again, seemingly out of nowhere, Malfoy's lithe form materializes in front of Harry with his mouth quirked in a grin that makes Harry feel a little uneasy. "Kira." He settles one slender hand on her shoulder comfortably. "What have I said about that smile? Grin any wider and your face will split in half."

The girl – Kira, apparently – looks over at Malfoy fondly, and Harry feels a twinge somewhere behind his ribcage. "I'm sure you know Potter," he continues, and Harry is irrationally annoyed that he can't even bother to introduce him using his first name, regardless of the fact that Kira probably knows it if she's bothered to pick up a newspaper in the past two decades.

"Of course." She reaches for his hand and shakes it firmly. "I've been _so_ excited to meet you-"

Draco cuts her off with a curt, "Stop it, Kira. I assure you, he already thinks the sun shines out of his ass without your help."

"He does have a nice-"

"Kira! Good grief! I'm sure he's already aware of that too."

Harry notes this as a very strange way for the two lovebirds to interact. He has never been able to understand straight couples, even when he had been part of one himself.

He realizes belatedly that Malfoy might have kindasortamaybe just admitted that he has a nice ass.

And just for the record, he's right. "Maybe I'm not the only one with staring problems, Malfoy."

The blonde's pale cheeks visibly flush at that comment, and he wonders how he hasn't been struck down dead on the spot because surely humiliation goes against some kind of Malfoy code. Nevertheless, Harry can't help but feel a little triumphant.

The blonde man recovers quickly and nods at Kira quickly. "I'm off. I have to see a man about a dog." He looks at Harry significantly, and he realizes he doesn't trust him enough to talk business in front of him. Kira merely nods and slips a hand along his shoulder as he heads toward the door. "And Potter? I would keep your hands to yourself, lest you lose them. This shop is not friendly toward… tourists."

Harry bristles visibly as the door closes behind Malfoy, but Kira only coos sympathetically at his side. "Don't worry about him, Harry. It just takes him a while to warm up to people. That's all."

"Is ten years a while? How much more time does he need?" He realizes belatedly that he might be being rude, but she only laughs.

"Come on. I'll show you around."

.oOo.

After five minutes, he begins to think he'll never find his way around this bizarre, nightmarish shop. At every turn is something so shadowy and dark that he is sure he could never imagine the sorts of effects it might have and someone. He's survived, to some extent, death so he knows better than anyone that there are worse things that lurk in the darker corners of the earth than that. It seems the majority of them exist in Borgin & Burkes and somehow, he isn't all that surprised.

While in Hogwarts, it was true that he had been, for all practical purposes, _obsessed_ with Draco Malfoy in their sixth year. And for good reason, as it turned out. But he hasn't forgotten the glimmer of something in those slate grey eyes in Malfoy Manor the next year. It hadn't been bravery... not quite… but it was, perhaps, the _desire_ to be. Harry had never forgotten it. The pair of them are not so very different. They both know what it's like to be forced into a situation that's beyond their control, and seems beyond their capabilities.

Then, Harry reminds himself that he isn't the one suspected of smuggling dark potions into England.

At the end of the tour, Kira turns to him with a soft look in her eyes. "Listen, Harry. Draco… he's really been through a lot since he left school. I don't know all the details, of course – he's very secretive – but…" she hesitates before raising her dark eyes to his, "there's a lot you don't understand about him. There's a lot _no one _understands about him, and I think he prefers it that way."

Harry pauses, respectful of her desire to tell him this. "But, why? What makes him like this? He has been, you know… ever since we met in our first year."

Kira only gives him a small smile. "I really wish I knew that. But Harry… sometimes the people you think are the worst of… are really just the ones who have been hurt the most. And sometimes the people you don't understand are the ones who are most worth getting to know."

He is stunned, and she seems to realize this, because she grabs an envelope from behind the counter and heads toward the door. "I have to go to Gringott's to drop something off. Draco will be back soon, so you should be fine. If a customer comes in, just let them browse. Most don't have the stones to approach the counter."

Harry really can't blame them.

Kira gives him one last smile before leaving him completely alone in the shop for the first time. He should use the time to investigate every corner of the place, but he finds himself frozen to the spot. He thinks of Sirius, as he often does in strange situations like these, and wonders what advice he would give him. What was it he had said? About light and dark?

Harry tries to remember, but his godfather's words escapes him.

.oOo.

Harry notes with a degree of panic that he has been left alone in the shop for half an hour and does not have the slightest inclination of what he can or cannot touch. It doesn't take long, however, to figure it out.

He runs his fingertips over an ancient-looking spearhead and hisses as he slices his finger open on it. Crimson beads swell up on his finger and sting as they hit the air. He laments the unfairness of it all, because surely… _surely_ those weapons should be dull with age by now. His attention is still fixated on the cut, and how _dark_ his blood looks before he feels a sinking feeling in his gut, because he _hears_ the weapons clinking together. And he's not touching them.

Within seconds, they raise up in the air with their tips pointed at various, _important_ parts of his body, and he pales.

Harry backs up slowly and grabs an antique shield from one of the shelves, praying that it doesn't curse him blind. It doesn't, and he holds it above his head just as the weapons crash down on him. He hears metal on metal which causes a hideous scraping noises… but that isn't the end of it. The weapons rear up to begin their second attack, and then their third. They are relentless, and Harry thinks he can't have possible survived the Dark Lord _twice_, and various Death Eater attacks only to be thwarted by a collection of ancient-looking spears and swords in Borgin & Burkes.

He hears some low words and the weapons pause as though confused, or uncertain. Then, Harry is slammed against the ground and shoved behind the counter by a slim blonde before he flourishes his wand at the artifacts with fall to the ground with a loud clank. Malfoy breathes above him and looks down at the ground before sliding his gaze onto Harry.

Harry is, once again, frozen. Malfoy's stare is intense and he feels uneasy, unsure of what he should do about it. The appraiser is kneeling next to him with Harry still flat on his back, embarrassingly enough, and grabs Harry's hand to inspect the wound on his finger. He brings it to his mouth, and Harry gapes as… as…

He begins to suck on it.

"Wh-…" He stammers uselessly.

Malfoy stops long enough to inform that, "I have to get the poison out."

Whatever his reasons are, it looks obscene, and Harry swears his heart stops for a second. The blonde's mouth is wrapped around his finger with his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. Then, Malfoy flicks his eyes up to Harry's and _oh god_…

Malfoy stands suddenly and dusts himself off. "I trust you can heal that on your own. It's time to close, and I have some… errands to run. I'll see you tomorrow." Harry scrambles to his feet and looks determinedly at anything _other_ that Malfoy. As Harry turns toward the door to leave, he looks over his shoulder finally at the blonde man.

"Thanks for that, Malfoy."

To his surprise, a ghost of a smile appears on his lips, and Harry finds himself grinning shakily as he leaves the shop. Finally, Sirius's words come to him.

_Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. _

_What matters is the part we choose to act on._

.oOo.

An hour later, Malfoy steps into the Knockturn Alley apothecary shop with a crooked grin on his lips as he steps up to the counter. He's had time to go home to his flat in Islington, change, and grab a few galleons before heading back to his alley.

"Give me an ounce of your best poison. Aconite, if you have it." The shopkeeper glances at him with a question written on his face.

He turns his arm until the light catches on a silver blade hidden in his sleeve. "Now, if you would."

He exits the shop with the same crooked smile on his lips that he entered with. He let Harry Potter ruin his life once.

He won't let him ruin it again.

_AN: Thank you for reading this far. Please leave a review!_


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: _This time with feeling… _Still not mine.

AN: I added a little bit to the end of the first chapter, so if you missed that part, I would suggest you go back and read it. This story is completely outlined, and I will be trying to update on a schedule so look for new chapters every Saturday.

.oOo.

"Potter, I need you to get into Malfoy's pants."

Harry sputters and has to pound himself on the chest to recover. To add insult to injury, his face betrays him by turning bright red, and his eyes begin to stream. He looks at his silver-haired boss, his voice a weak croak. "Pardon me, ma'am?"

"Well my goodness, Potter… please refrain from coughing out a lung in my office. The paperwork alone would be murder…"

He recovers as best as he is able. "Right."

"I have reason to believe that Malfoy might be hiding something on his person which might provide us with some _very_ incriminating evidence."

"In his pants?" Harry asks weakly.

Blackwell peers over her half-moon spectacles at him as though he is the most spectacular moron she has ever had the displeasure of having in her office. "We're looking for some kind of correspondence from his sources in Egypt and Nepal. Everyone has skeletons in the closet Potter. It's just a matter of finding them. Understand?"

Harry leans forward with his elbows resting on his knees, making sure that no part of him betrays the level of utter _discomfort_ he feels over having this conversation with his boss. "You want me to make Malfoy trust me?"

Blackwell smiles at him. It's frightening. "Precisely, Potter. Play that man like a violin."

Harry, of course, has not told anyone other than Hermione and Ron about his preferences when it comes to his partners, but he gets the sense that Blackwell might have figured it out all on her own. It's bizarre, it's creepy, and he doesn't like it in the slightest. It doesn't help that he can't get Malfoy out his head, and it isn't just because he's the focus of his current case either.

Or perhaps it's simply that she's growing a bit concerned. It's been a week and he has yet to find a single shred of evidence that they could use to incriminate Malfoy. His taxes are up to date, his paperwork is in order, and he doesn't have a single mark on his record.

The bloke even _recycles_.

"You may go." She goes back to scrawling something on the piece of paper in front of her. Harry imagines it might read something like _Note to Self: Potter is Grade A Idiot_. "Just remember, while you're playing him… make sure he isn't playing you. It's your game Potter. You make the rules."

Harry nods as though he understands before exiting just as quickly as he always does.

.oOo.

When he enters the shop, Malfoy is sitting quietly at the counter, bent over some book that looks vastly important judging by the furrow in his brow and the fact that he can't seem to be bothered to brush away the hair which has to be obscuring his vision. The window next to him allows only a narrow stream of light into the shop, and Malfoy is drenched in it.

He'd always had a reputation at school, Harry remembers. It was hard to escape Hogwarts without one, but his was the kind that had girls talking in scandalized whispers between classes when he walked by and yet had them trying to casually catch his eye at the same time. He made time for them, apparently, when he wasn't making Harry's life hell. Or perhaps when Harry was busy spending time in the hospital wing, or chasing horcruxes.

Funny how a teenager's schedule could fill up like that.

He'd never really noticed in school, or perhaps he'd pretended not to, but whatever the case had been, it doesn't escape his notice now that the man in front of him is beautiful.

There's really no other word to describe him either. His features are too sharp and too boyish to be considered feminine, but there's something graceful about the figure he cuts in the sunlight, even though he's slumped over the book. His posture is still better than Harry's ever is, he notices with a grimace.

"Staring again, Potter? Goodness, we really must break you of that little habit." Harry shakes himself and his eyes snap up to Malfoy's grey ones which are full of so much mirth that it's all he can do not to grab him by the collar and-

Well, he's torn. He can't decide what he'd do after that.

"It really is quite unnerving. How was your meeting?"

"It was fine." He hangs up his coat in the same place he has for the past week. "Blackwell was charming as usual."

"Ah, that old devil. I've a feeling we'd get along quite well, under different circumstances."

Harry doesn't doubt this in the slightest.

"Get in a good gossip about me, did you?" His grey eyes are lowered to the book in front of him again, and Harry feels a sick sort of desperation to make them look at him again. _This is your game_, he reminds himself sternly. _Your game_. Malfoy grins. He could rule the world with that grin, really. Harry thanks whatever deity chooses to listen that he doesn't use it more often.

"If the rumors about you now are as true as the ones were in school…"

Malfoy has a wicked look on his face, though he's still staring at that damn book. "Well you wouldn't know if the ones from school are true, would you? I suppose it's one of those things you'd have to find out for yourself."

Harry only shakes his head and walk over to the counter, just to show how not affected he is by his charmingly witty retorts.

"Work on checking the inventory if I really _must _breath the same air as you all day long." He says this every day. "I swear, watching you try to find your way around the shop… I don't know how impressive Darwinism is if this is what we've evolved into." That's a new one.

"Fuck you, Malfoy," Harry says, though there's no edge in his voice. He's come to appreciate this easy, if thoroughly degrading banter they've picked up since he showed up at Borgin & Burkes the week before.

"Cheers," he says blithely. "I've really been needing a good wench to straighten up my shelves. Kira's okay, but she's too many brain cells to rub together to do it without going mad."

Another day on the job.

They fall into silence, interrupted only by the sound of pages turning and Harry moving about between the shelves. There's all manners of things in Borgin & Burkes, he notes, from the mundane to the extraordinary. The inventory's a bit different from the last time he was in the shop. Malfoy's tasted seem to be more eclectic when it comes to dark artifacts than dangerous, and Harry can't help but hope that that will weigh in his favor when the time comes for him to go to trial, which he inevitably must. If Harry doesn't find something, then Blackwell will simply make something up. It isn't a perfect system – the people at the top still get their way.

He reads the placard for a collection of delicate pearl necklaces shown off in narrow boxes lined with black silk. He takes care not to touch them, because come to find out, they strangle the wearer over the course of a few hours, growing shorter and shorter until they are killed by their own appetite for luxury. He has to chide himself for his cautiousness, because it's not as though he planned on putting one _on_.

He checks them off, then comes across a simple bronze compass. It looks ancient, as many of the objects in the shop do, and he recognizes it as the antique an aging man who looks nearly as old as the compass itself came in with looking to sell a few days prior. As he picks it up, the needle waves uncertainly between 'Conflicted' and 'Just'. The other options are 'Corrupt' and 'Dishonest'. A moral compass.

Harry snorts.

The hours wear on, slowly but steadily, and by noon, Harry's almost accidentally released a genie from its lamp and has had a small scare with a mummy's sarcophagus. No harm, no foul, he figures, though Malfoy seems very unimpressed.

They don't talk much, and Kira's out running errands, so she can't break the silence. Harry thinks that perhaps it's best that way, because it they're not talking, they're not pissing each other off. Too much. The silence is _loud_ though, and he can almost hear the words they're being careful not to say.

After the war, the media had followed the Malfoys around relentlessly. The Ministry had stripped them of their money, their home, and anything of value. The Prophet intended to strip them of any pride they had left. Every headline detailed their every movement. The entire Wizarding world knew when Malfoy had started getting into potion abuse, when he had gone to rehab, and when he had gotten out. They also knew when he went to the Ministry for his father's trial, when his girlfriend had sold him out to the Prophet, and when his father had killed himself in his cell in Azkaban.

They also knew every time he stepped out for coffee, or went to the grocery store.

Draco Malfoy had been a verifiable celebrity, but it was the kind of fame that Harry would never wish on anyone. He knew what it was like, after all.

The media, of course, hadn't quit until they'd drained him of every drop of integrity.

Harry knew the wit, the scathing comments… they were covering up something deeper.

He glances at the blonde between the shelves who is currently tinkering with an old music box. "Staring again, Potter," he murmurs without looking up.

Harry gets back to work with a sigh and yanks off a white sheet to see what's underneath, just in time to hear Malfoy tell him not to. He's faced with a full-sized mirror which at first looks ordinary – too ordinary for Borgin & Burkes – and he nearly scoffs at the blonde's concern.

Then, the reflection changes and shifts until he's faced with something dark and nightmarish. His body twists as the shadowy creature within reaches out tendrils which curl around his waist and drag him in closer like a puppet on strings. His limbs feel loose and his mind feels empty before a strange fog seems to fill it with horrible, grotesque images. The acrid smell of burning flesh fills his nostrils and his eyes are filled with a suffocating blackness right before his limbs are wracked with pain.

He has the clarity to think, for a second, that it's _his_ flesh that's burning.

He would scream, but he seems incapable.

It feels as though his flesh is being peeled away from his bones, and his bones are being peeled away from its marrow. He's experienced pain, of course, but the Cruciatus Curse is nothing in comparison to _this_. He wonders what horrible sin he'd committed to deserve it.

After an excruciating moment, which seems like years, Harry is wrenched away from the mirror and pulled backward against a nearby cabinet. He and Malfoy fall together to the ground with the blonde's arms wrapped tightly around Harry's chest. Harry feels starved for air and gasps, dragging in breath after breath until he feels like his lungs might burst.

"Potter. POTTER. Calm down now. Come on. You're okay, you're all right…" The blonde doesn't let go and his hold on Harry is almost painfully tight. Harry can feel his breath whistling past his ear as he tries to calm him down, though with limited success.

"Wh- What the _fuck_?"

Malfoy casts a calming charm on him and he feels it wash over him, erasing his anxiety and slowing his heart until it was only rattling his ribcage a _little_ bit, instead of a lot.

"Yeah, nasty little blighter isn't it?"

"_Shit."_

He has a feeling he'll be talking solely in curses for a while.

"It's a nightmare speculum."

Harry, quite frankly, could care less about what it is at this point in time.

"I bought it off of an Indian man a few years ago. We used to use them in the war-" He cuts himself off, though Harry can imagine what his side would have used them for. "You doing okay?"

"Bloody hell," Harry gasps, though he has the clarity to realize that Malfoy still has his arms around him. He thinks that Malfoy probably has forgotten they're there.

"Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. _Hell_." His voice is a low murmur.

"You've… you've had that used on you before?"

There's a long pause. "Yes."

"… More than once?"

Another pause. "Yes."

"_Fuck."_

"Mm." He stops, and Harry wonders if he's going to have to ask another prying question before he continues on his own. "It was a way to make sure we wouldn't crack under pressure if we got caught. It wasn't just a physical war… it was mental. He broke us down until we were barely human… until we were just bodies to do what he needed to be done." Harry's breathing is coming easier now and he shifts against Malfoy's chest. He feels Malfoy tense a little, but he doesn't move.

"I never… I've never heard about what it was like for your side."

"It was a joyride." He moves away finally and unwinds his arms from around Harry before leaning against the cabinet next to him. "In all seriousness, I was young, and I got pushed into something that I had no control over. I think you know what I mean when I say that."

Harry chews on his bottom lip. They're still close… close enough for Harry to feel the heat radiating off of his body, and he has the urge to reach out and touch him again. Even though _he's_ the one who's supposed to be being comforted, he can't help but think that he's not the one who really needs it.

"Are you doing okay now?" Harry simply nods.

"There was a lot that happened that your side would never understand. We weren't supporters, really, we were just… afraid. And under a mad man's thumb." He breathes out of his nose and sighs. "Harry, all I can say is that you do what you have to if you want to survive."

He licks his lips and looks over at him. "That's the first time you've ever called me Harry."

Malfoy smiles. It's beautiful. "Don't get used to it."

Harry hesitates. "And after the war?"

The appraiser shrugs and throws his hands loosely over his knees. "I think you know that part. I think the whole world knows that part."

Harry looks down, and Malfoy glances at him, then shoves his shoulder lightly. "Shut up. I could hear your pity if I were standing on the other side of town right now."

He grins a little. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize if you don't mean it, Potter."

"Sorry," he says again, without thinking. Malfoy laughs. Harry suddenly feels exhausted and for good reason. Anyone would after feeling like their bones were being pulled apart. Or while having a conversation with Draco Malfoy. "You're different."

Malfoy considered this for a moment. "No, I'm not. People don't change, Potter. They just decide to show you who they've been all along."

Harry smiles. "So this is you then?"

"This is me."

"It's nice to meet you, Draco Malfoy." He holds out his hand, having never forgotten that he'd refused to take Malfoy's when they'd been first years. He panics for a moment, thinking that perhaps he's still holding a grudge and that he'll have to endure the humiliation of being denied a simple handshake. He'd deserve it.

Malfoy shakes his head. "This is absurd." But he shakes Harry's hand anyway.

Harry looks away because he knows he can't stop the grin that is far too wide for his face, and he doesn't want Malfoy to see it. He has more questions, _god _so many more questions, but he merely shifts uncomfortably instead of asking them. "You know, we're sitting on the floor."

He looks around and pretends to be shocked. "My _goodness_, your perceptiveness knows no bounds, Potter. I'm truly astounded at the amount of awareness you manage to show on a daily basis."

_Annnd moment over_, Harry thinks.

Kira chooses that moment to walk in and the bell above the door elicits a scream. She turns in a slow half-circle trying to search Malfoy out in the semi-darkness, and when she spots him, she wrinkles her nose. "You're sitting on the floor."

Harry can feel the exasperation emanating off of the blonde next to him. "_Christ_, you two are fucking _brilliant_, I swear. Couple of Einsteins, you are."

She glances down at Harry, who realizes belatedly he is sitting in a very large patch of dust. "What's going on here?"

Malfoy stands up and dusts himself off a bit fastidiously. "He had a bad run in with the nightmare speculum."

"Oooh…" She winces sympathetically. "I had a bad run in with that when I first started working here. Draco's a bit lax about warning people." She smiles at him fondly.

"You have to let people learn from their mistakes. A child doesn't know that fire burns until they stick their hand in it." He examines his fingernails idly. "Or something like that."

She shakes her head with a small smile and strides over to offer Harry a hand. "Are you okay?"

He takes it and pulls himself to his feet. "Yeah, I think so…"

She tisks and then glances at Malfoy. "Sorry I'm late. Carter wanted lunch at the last second."

"Your son?" Harry asks.

"Her bloke," Malfoy corrects. Harry feels a little giddy over the fact that they are not, in fact, dating after all. He wonders why he cares so much, but it doesn't take long for him to realize that the reason is because he's fucked.

Kira's a beautiful girl, but it's Malfoy he has his sights set on.

He's only been there for a week and already the case is shot to hell. He can't find a single shred of evidence against the shop or anything might link it to the crimes. And worse than that, he might be falling for the shop's owner, who also happens to be the same person who made his life _hell_ for the first seventeen years of his life.

If there is a god, he has a funny sense of humor, Harry thinks.

Malfoy directs Kira into the back room to show her the research he'd been working on all morning without paying Harry another glance. Harry wanders over to the counter and leans heavily against it, he realizes suddenly that he _is_ in the middle of a game, just as Blackwood said.

But…

He really doesn't think he's winning.

.oOo.

It's late and the shop has been closed for hours, but Draco still lurks in the back room with the lights down low. There's a small cauldron in front of him burning over a small collection of bluebell flames while the potion hisses away within. He waits until it turns a bright amber color before he vanishes the flames with a small grin illuminated only by the cauldron's contents and the moonlight pouring in through the glass panes in front of him. A crow watches him cautiously from the windowsill.

He seems comfortable in the dark shop as he dips a vial into the potion and stoppers it with grey eyes full of something frightening before he slips it away in his jacket. Without hesitating in the slightest, he vanishes the cauldron and any sign that he had been there at all. All it takes is one more moment before even he vanishes, and the crow is left wondering if he was ever there at all.

_Thank you for reading, and please leave a review! :) They always inspire me to keep writing!_


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine, but they would have _so _much more fun if they were.

AN: I had fun writing this, and I hope you have fun reading it! And thank you for all your kind reviews so far. :)

.oOo.

When Harry walks into the shop the next day, he is met with the sound of breaking glass.

He looks up in time to see an antique urn crash into the blank wall behind the shop till. There are two people who logically could be the culprit behind the broken pottery. Kira really doesn't seem the type to break the merchandise, particularly if she doesn't want to get thrown out on her ass, which Harry imagines she doesn't. So, by process of elimination, he comes to the conclusion that it must be… "Malfoy. Sorry, but… what the actual _fuck_?"

He can't see him, but he can hear his voice floating out from behind one of the shelves. "Again with the apologies you don't mean, Potter." His voice sounds dull, listless, and Harry feels a twinge of worry for this man whose feelings should be none of his concern.

He considers apologizing, before realizing that would _probably_ be a _very_ bad idea.

The blonde steps out into his line of vision and Harry has to consciously hold back a small gasp threatening to make itself known.

He looks… worse than tired. His grey eyes are empty and the skin beneath them is dark… shadowed. They look hollow. His clothes drape loosely over his shoulders and hips as though even they are threatening to fall apart, just like the man they adorn. It's all Harry can do not to curse again.

"What happened?" is his brilliant response.

Malfoy sniffs and glances at the destroyed porcelain with a certain dull curiosity. "I broke a vase." He pauses. "Two, in fact."

"Er… yes, I see that."

Malfoy runs a hand down his face and then through his hair. After he's done, it looks artfully tousled, instead of merely flawless. "A client of mine died last night. Apparently, he mishandled an artifact I sold him last week, but the papers are already speculating that it was murder, and guess who they're crucifying?" He stares fixedly at an imaginary spot on the wall, then turns his head to look at Harry. "When does it end? This… this media feeding frenzy over the things we did when we were kids?"

Harry looks back at him grimly. "I've been asking myself that same question for years."

Malfoy doesn't look away. "It's only a matter of time before your sort gets involved. They don't seem to care that the very air that comes out of Skeeter's lungs comes out crooked." In spite of the vase throwing and the hairline fractures in his usual chilly demeanor, his composure is somehow still intact. But a small fracture in the right place, with the right pressure can still break a dam. "Fucking HELL, Potter." The small explosion of fury from the thin blonde is enough to shake the windows, and Harry actually takes a few steps backward.

_You look really good when you're angry, if it's any consolation…_ he thinks to himself. "Those media hounds would sell their firstborn if it'd get them a good story, Malfoy. You know that. Their word doesn't mean a thing." He pauses. "Everyone is entitled to be stupid but… some people abuse the privilege."

Malfoy merely snorts before he rests his forearms on the counter and then cradles his head between them. When he comes up for air again, his composure is back in place as though it never left. "I can get… I can get Hermione to see if she can draft up some kind of statement about it. She's a Ministry spokesperson and all…"

He looks at Harry sharply. "I'm not buying the whole good cop bad cop routine, Potter."

"It isn't that-"

"I want this mess cleaned up. Give me a shot of Veritaserum." At Harry's look of disbelief, he shrugs. "Make it a double. Go big or go home, right? And anyway," he gives him a dismal smirk, "I think we have a lot to talk about."

.oOo.

Harry sits across from Malfoy in the back room of the shop and watches him grimace as he swallows down the veritaserum in one swallow. He waits patiently and looks around, though he's already been in this room at least a dozen times over the past couple of weeks. His gaze catches on something new sitting on the work bench across from him – a glass slipper, which is shattered in places and missing half of its heel. It's stained with something red, and it doesn't take much to figure out what it might be. He thinks of the old Muggle fairytale, of course, and shakes his head minutely.

_Bibidi babidi blood._

"State your name, please," he says finally, once he's given the potion enough time to settle into Malfoy's veins.

"Oh good grief, is this really necessary?"

"It's protocol, Malfoy. Someone might have used Polyjuice Potion… though why they'd want _your_ face…" Harry grins; Malfoy grimaces.

"Draco Abraxas Malfoy. For fuck's sake…" Harry takes care to leave the tail end of his answer out of the record, deeming it irrelevant.

Harry pauses; if he's going to follow protocol, this conversation is going to be very awkward. "Have you ever committed a criminal offense?"

The blonde pauses and turns his head toward the window. Harry studies his profile, from his sharp jaw line and high cheekbones – he still looks a little worse for wear, but he's still stunning. It concerns him slightly that he thinks so, and even more so that he might be having an identity crisis because of Draco Malfoy. "Yes." He hesitates, but Harry knows he doesn't need to prompt him. This was his idea after all, and if had something to hide, surely he wouldn't have suggested it. "The assisted murder of Albus Dumbledore and membership in a terrorist organization." His voice lowered to a mere whisper. "The case was dismissed at the request of," grey eyes flick upward to meet green, "Harry Potter."

Harry swallows hard. "Is that the only one?"

Malfoy gives him a hard look. "Yes," he says coldly. Harry knows he can't be lying – it's impossible. And yet… all other signs indicate that he _is_.

"Do you have any enemies?"

Malfoy scoffs. "Aside from anyone who reads the Prophet… no."

"Malfoy, have you ever been… harassed in any way?"

He drops his chin and a piece of silvery blonde hair covers his face. "Yes."

"By who? And in what way?"

"Just people. You can't commit as many sins as I have without expecting to pay some kind of penance."

"Malfoy-"

He cuts Harry off swiftly. "No… no, before you start radiating pity again Potter…" He dips his head down and Harry can tell that this conversation is costing him more pride than he's letting on. "You don't understand. Their words, their low blows, could never be as harmful to me as my own... _guilt_. If you're searching for the one to blame for the state I'm in, you're looking at him."

"You were young."

Malfoy's gaze is suddenly steely. "So were you. That didn't stop you from fighting for what you believed in, when I was too afraid to fight for anything. I was too conflicted to even get involved at all, beyond trying to save my own skin."

Harry has the urge to shout at him, because somewhere along the line, his feelings toward Malfoy have completely shifted. He pauses and selects his next words carefully. _"_You're complex. Much more so than I gave you credit for in school."

Malfoy snorts. "That's one word for it, I suppose."

"I feel like I could spend forever trying to get to know you and never know the half of it." Harry can feel the flush spreading over the back of his neck, but his gaze doesn't waver as he watches Malfoy sitting across him, looking far too composed for someone who was saying a lot of things out loud that he probably never had before. Somehow though, Harry gets the sense that even if he wasn't under the influence of Veritaserum, he'd still say them. This stark honesty is disarming, and he has the feeling that he's more uncomfortable than Malfoy is.

Malfoy merely smiles. "How well can you ever really know anyone? Everyone has secrets. Most of which don't ever see the light of day."

_Yes_, Harry thinks, _but I'm sorry, because yours will have by the time I'm done._

It's still a game, after all. It occurs to him that it's a bit one-sided if Malfoy doesn't even know he's playing.

Harry clears his throat; switches gears. "Are you aware that you are being accused of smuggling and selling illegal potions?"

"I am."

"Have you done so, or have you assisted anyone in doing so?"

Malfoy's gaze is cool, collected, and sincere as he utters the three words that put Harry in a very difficult position. "I have not."

"I need to know all of your closest… associates, if you will."

Harry is shocked into a wide-eyed stare as Malfoy lets loose a genuine laugh. "Fuck, Potter… you're incredible. You think I don't have friends, don't you? Like a typical coldhearted Slytherin. _Associates_… jesus." He pauses, gives himself some time to recover, before he continues, though he's still shaking his head. "You'll have to rephrase that as a question, I'm afraid."

Harry, feeling thoroughly sorry for assuming any such thing, places his hand on the table between them quickly. "I didn't mean that. Really." Malfoy merely inspects his hand as though he's never seen such a thing before waving a manicured one of his own airily in front of him, dismissing his concerns completely. "Right. So, who are the people that are closest to you then?"

Malfoy hesitates, though the Veritaserum only grants him a moment. "My parents. Greg. Pansy. Kira." His lips twitch. "Blaise."

"What are their relations to you? Aside from your parents, obviously."

"Greg's a friend. Pansy's a friend. Kira's a coworker, obviously." He pauses again, perhaps theatrically. "Blaise is an ex-lover… and now a friend."

Harry feels his pulse speed up because surely… surely Malfoy's not _really_-

"The answer to the question that you're not asking is _yes_, by the way. I'm bent. Highly irrelevant, of course." Malfoy's eyes sparkle with something Harry can't quite place but it makes him feel a little queasy nonetheless. "It _is _irrelevant, right _Harry_?"

Hearing him say his first name, especially like _that_, seems to have a direct connection to his crotch. He shifts uncomfortably and blushes; Malfoy smirks. And just like that, Harry knows that he knows.

He knows that he's woken up the past few mornings with his mind still on fire with thoughts of _him_ still swimming hazily thought his semi-conscious brain. He knows that he's constantly on Harry's mind, from the moment he gets out of bed to the moment he gets back in it. Perhaps not _all _of that, but he knows enough. His eyes drift from Harry's eyes to the curve of his collarbone, and then lower – he licks his lips hungrily, and Harry feels exposed. "Completely irrelevant. Your sexuality is certainly none of my concern."

It occurs to him that one of the two men in this room _is _a liar, and it isn't Malfoy. He notes that he still has that insufferable smirk on his face, and Harry really _really_ wants to punch that pretty mouth just to make him stop. There are, of course, a few other things he'd like to do too, but he forces himself to push them to the back of his mind. "Interesting." He coughs delicately and pushes his chair back. "Are we done here?"

Harry takes a deep breath and looks over his notes. "Yeah, I suppose so."

"Good." He pushes back his chair and stands, looming over Harry at his full height. Malfoy makes his way to the threshold between the back room and the rest of the shop, though he stops short just before he reaches it. Without turning around, he leaves Harry with one more parting shot. "One would never need a potion to get the truth out of you, Potter." Harry can just _hear_ the smile in his voice. "You're a terrible liar."

.oOo.

Harry finds himself sitting across from Hermione a few hours later, who has already gone into Crazy Analytical Mode after he's caught her up on everything. He, however, is stirring his coffee dismally and waiting for her to berate him quite thoroughly for his unprofessionalism these past few weeks. Ron is still away somewhere in Germany, setting up yet another Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes shop, so Harry knows she'll have plenty of time to stew over his current predicament. As usual, Ron's timing could not be worse. Harry loves Hermione, but she can truly be impossibly motherly, even when Ron is around to distract her with his latest blunder. He suspects that it won't be any different now.

So he is surprised when she says: "You know, I don't think he's behind all of this actually."

Harry wonders if she somehow missed the part where he told her he couldn't thinking about Malfoy. Granted, he hadn't told her explicitly what his thoughts _are_ about Malfoy, because they can be very explicit indeed, but enough for her to get the gist. "Hm," he says neutrally.

"There simply isn't a way around Veritaserum. He _has_ to be telling the truth. I've researched it, and there is no antidote for it, and besides, he _volunteered_ to take it…" She tucks her brown hair behind one ear thoughtfully.

"He knows. He _knows_." Harry stares at his coffee mournfully.

Hermione blinks and shakes her head, making it clear that she _did_ hear his little tirade about his sudden... _interest _in Malfoy. "Well, I mean… Harry, no offense, but that can only work out in your favor. You're so shy… he'd never have figured it out if he'd had to wait for you to tell him."

"I'm not sure I wanted him to find out… given that I'm supposed to hate him. I'm really not sure that I _don't_, actually."

She takes a disparaging breath. "That was a lifetime ago. Really, Harry, I want you to be happy. Stop feeling so humiliated and just _feel_. You over think these things sometimes…"

Harry thinks that hypocrisy must be catching.

"Over thinking the fact that he hates me, that I ruined his life, that he essentially ruined _mine?_ Hermione, I feel like if I am over thinking it, I have good reason."

She shakes her head and gives him a calm smile. "He never hated you- no, really Harry, listen," she says hurriedly at his grunt of indignation, "he was just jealous. Think about it… all the things he did… they were just ways to get attention. He was vile, yes, but the war changed all of us. Maybe it changed him."

Harry wants to inform her that she's wrong, actually, because according to Malfoy, people _don't _change. "Maybe he's just decided to be who he has been all along." He can practically _see_ Malfoy's smug smile over the fact that Harry's been cataloguing everything he's said in the past few weeks (and not necessarily because it's his job) even if they _are _on opposite sides of London at the moment.

She grins, apparently pleased at his shift in attitude, though she doesn't know that he's only parroting what the man in question said himself. "Well, in any case, he still strongly resembles a ferret, if you ask me, Harry. Except for his nose, which seems sharp enough to serve as an ice pick."

Harry opens his mouth to defend Malfoy's nose, before deciding he doesn't have much of a case. Hermione's grin only grows until he's sure her face might split in half. Luckily, it fades and is replaced with her usual thoughtful expression. There's something she isn't telling him, and he can almost hear her battling with herself over whether she should. "Harry, there's something you should know. There's a group – they're calling themselves the Order, though it obviously disbanded long ago – they… they're determined to…" she pauses, her cheeks flushing, "_exterminate_ the Death Eater _scum_, as they call them. The Ministry's been keeping it quiet, and I haven't been allowed to say anything, but…" She hesitates. "It's really only a matter of time before someone gets hurt."

It's selfish, and he knows it, but he can't help but hope that it isn't _his_ someone that gets hurt. Hermione seems to recognize this, but doesn't comment on it. "They traipse around with mask and feather tattoos on their left forearm. There's only been a few sightings… that's why we've been able to keep it so hush hush." She bites her lip. "They haven't harmed anyone yet. But… well, you can imagine who would be at the top of their list."

She hesitates again. "An anonymous source told us to expect an attack today."

"Why are you just telling me this _now?" _Harry feels cold all over; a wave of anxiety washes over him.

"I have to get back," he murmurs without waiting for her response. He stands and tosses some bills on the table. As he leaves, he barely hears Hermione shouting after him.

"Harry, be careful."

And Harry thinks to himself that everyone's been so worried about him all these years, when Malfoy's the one who really needed their concern.

All these years, they have let him drown in his own guilt while they showered Harry in their gratitude and admiration. Malfoy had been persecuted for the sins of his family and was still paying for it every single day. Words could slice as deeply as a knife, and the papers seemed intent on cutting him into ribbons. Harry knew that torn flesh and blood was only a fraction of the damage a person might truly endure.

Harry knew that when something really hurts, you don't wear it on your sleeve. You keep it to yourself. And Harry knew just how damaged Draco Malfoy really was.

.oOo.

An hour later, he is racing through Knockturn Alley like a mad man, trying to locate one tall blonde man after tearing apart the shop in an attempt to find him. When he doesn't succeed, he knows he's too late. The images flickered through his head like an old film strip: Malfoy laying on cold stones slick with crimson, Malfoy bruised and battered shrouded in shadows, and worse.

He couldn't disguise this as concern on behalf of his office as an Auror. He couldn't disguise this as heroism or bravery. This was something else, and he knew it. He just wasn't ready to give it a name.

As he rounded another corner into a dark, narrow alleyway, his breath caught in his chest and his green eyes widened as the darkness cast a thin veil over the lurid scene in front of him which was _worse_ than anything he had imagined, because this was _real_. Harry raised his wand toward Malfoy as he had many times before, but this time, he wasn't aiming for him.

His wand spat angry red sparks at the shrouded, masked figure standing threateningly over the thin blonde who lay motionless in a stagnant puddle of water near the edge of the alleyway. He can just make out the outline of a feather on his forearm, and he feels something sharp and angry rise up in his chest.

"Get the _fuck_ away from him. ACER DORSUS!"

The spell, in a combination of experience and age, was powerful enough to knock the figure sideways and crush him against the slick stone wall. In an instant, the cloaked man was off running in the opposite direction, while Harry runs to Malfoy's side.

He dragged the man against his chest as he himself sank to the ground next to him. The blonde was shaking helplessly… whimpering. Harry feels a kind of fury in the depths of his chest that he hasn't since Voldemort's reign – the only thing that's absent is the white-hot pain of his scar burning and splitting wide open.

"You're okay… you're fine. He's gone, and I'm here, and everything's going to be okay…" Thin fingers sought his own and wrapped tight around them as a dry sob was ripped from his body. Harry wondered if he'd ever sought this kind of comfort from anyone else before.

"_Harry_." The man's voice is a hoarse whisper, and Harry wonders how long he had shouted for help that he had known would not come.

He tilts his chin up. "Let me see…" He can already see the skin discoloring and swelling around his eyes. His lip is bleeding. There's an angry gash crooked and red down one side of his face. Harry smiles weakly. "You've never looked better."

Malfoy manages a feeble grin in return, and Harry's heart swells for this broken, beaten man. He manages a scratchy, torn murmur before he closes his eyes and rests his head against Harry's shoulder. "You're a terrible liar."

.oOo.

_Reviews are appreciated!_


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1. None of this is mine, obviously. Apparently I just enjoy pushing out stories like these that make my fingers bleed and my eyes cross.

AN: This chapter contains a bit of wanking, a bit of pining, and a bit of angry!Harry. Do enjoy. ;)

.oOo.

"Stupid Gryffindor," a weary blonde murmurs on the sofa. "_Stupid_ Gryffindor…" The owner of said sofa notes that this may well be the hundredth time he's uttered that phrase in the past two hours.

Harry studies Malfoy quietly from where he's thrown himself lazily over a ratty old armchair nearby. There's an open bottle of firewhiskey on the coffee table between them, and a puddle of amber liquid next to it which didn't quite reach the glass. Harry lifts his cigarette to his mouth as Malfoy does the same. He doesn't really smoke that often, not enough to be considered a smoker, but he enjoys a cigarette when he's had a particularly off day. It goes without saying that _today_ has been one of those days. This is hardly the way he'd imagined bringing Draco Malfoy home with him, and oh _god_, he _has_ imagined it over the past few days.

He's a Gryffindor obviously… to a fault… but he isn't sure why he's a _stupid_ one, so he decides there's no harm in asking. The man crashed out on his sofa has been groaning every time he's had to move a muscle. Horrible patients, Slytherins. In any case, he's got a feeling that he can say whatever he wants tonight and not worry about getting decked for it.

Oddly, Malfoy remains quiet after he's finished posing the question and takes another drag off of his cigarette. Grey smoke spills past his lips and swirls around his head like an eerie, twisted halo. "You're not a hero. You're a bloody martyr."

"Excuse me?"

He licks his lips slowly. They're split open and swollen. Harry can't stop staring even though he knows it's wrong. The man's been preyed upon enough tonight without his hungry glances. "You hate me." He laughs; it sounds a bit hysterical. "And you've saved me twice now."

_Three times_, Harry corrects silently. "I don't hate you," he says a little too quickly. Malfoy's eyebrows shoot up.

"Get stuffed. You'd have kicked my arse three ways to Ipswich had you been given half a chance when we were in school. Hell, I've got a pretty good idea of what my innards look like thanks to you. God save us all if you ever end up with a scalpel in your hand…" There's no malice in his words, but Harry still looks down. Guilty.

Malfoy shrugs. "But I deserved no less."

Harry doesn't have anything to say to that. After a long pause, he opens his mouth. "How're you feeling?" he ventures.

"Fucking fantastic, thanks."

"You're a shit, you know."

"I'm well aware."

Harry falls silent again. His stomach lurches again at the recent memory of apparating the both of them out of that dirty alleyway and back to his house. He'd toyed with the idea of taking him to Mungo's, but Malfoy had insisted against it, and Harry couldn't blame him. The attention they'd both receive if they went wasn't worth it, particularly when Harry could heal up most of the bruises and cuts himself. Some of the worst injuries were still yellowed and swollen. It wasn't as good as a healer could have done, and Malfoy had made damn sure that he knew it.

"You're right. I did hate you," Harry says after a moment.

Malfoy snorts. "Good _god_, you don't say." He swallows, and Harry can tell it hurts a little. That bastard who'd hurt him had been after blood. "What made you come back?"

Harry knows what he's talking about. "Same reason I had when I saved your arse the first time. If I let you die, I wouldn't have anyone to hate anymore. And," he grins a little, "I'm a bloody martyr."

Malfoy smiles.

"You know, you're not nearly as unpleasant to be around as you always led us to believe, Malfoy. I find this highly disturbing, you do realize."

"Yeah, well… try telling me that when you're sober."

"I _am_," Harry cuts in.

"Mm," Malfoy hums to himself, clearly amused. "Well if you find you can't manage it without any liquor in you, I'll just remember you only take three shots to get fucked up."

Harry laughs, surprisingly not insulted, though he's aware of Malfoy's eyes on him. Watching him. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Think you just did."

"What happened during… you know…"

"When it all went to hell?" Malfoy suggests helpfully.

"Yeah."

He takes another drag off of his cigarette just as Harry drops his in the ashtray on the table.

"Is now the time to talk about it?"

"No, probably not," Harry admits.

That seems to give him a reason to talk about it. "That night, when Dumbledore died…"

There's a long pause. "Yeah?"

He looks at Harry. His eyes seem colder than usual. "Well, I was supposed to be the one to kill him."

Harry licks his lips and swings his foot restlessly, which Malfoy notes but doesn't comment on. Not in so many words, anyway. "But you knew that, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Harry admits.

Malfoy closes his eyes tiredly… disinterestedly… as though they aren't currently having a conversation they should have had years ago. "Bastard," he murmurs after a moment.

"I think what matters is the fact that you _weren't_ the one who killed him."

Malfoy grows still… too still. "Perhaps."

"And you didn't sell me out when they brought me to your home. You knew it was me, didn't you?"

"'Course I did. Didn't deny it was you either."

Harry studies the man stretched out on his sofa. His silver hair fans out across its hideous scarlet cushions. His slender fingers grasp at the blanket Harry threw over him.

He's wearing one of Harry's t-shirts and a pair of his pajama bottoms, which he only put on after he realized the alternative was laying around with his cock and balls out. He's never really understood men's fascination with seeing some piece of tail walk around in only their button-down from the night before.

Now he does.

And yes, Harry realizes that he's fucked.

"Do you wish…" Harry hesitates.

Malfoy's eyes fly open. "Do I wish what? That I'd fucking done the brave thing and told the lot of them to sod off? That I'd… gotten help. Asked for help? That I'd died rather than… than…" His eyes stray to his forearm and Harry can just make out the old black scar.

"Every fucking day of my life." His gaze is hollow as it finds Harry's. Haunted. "And you. You sit there, and you regret _nothing. _ If you were any more perfect, you'd be made of plastic." A hint of his old schoolboy animosity and venom creeps back into his voice.

"I have regrets, just like anyone else."

"Like…?"

"You."

Harry imagines that Malfoy is stunned, though he is, as usual, too composed to show it.

"I knew you were in trouble. Bloody _knew_ it. And I was too blinded by what _I _was being forced to do, to really think about what _you_ were being forced to do. I'm not perfect, Malfoy. I was selfish." Harry's eyes search for the silver-grey of Malfoy's. "And I regret that."

Malfoy is silent for what seems like forever, and Harry taps the rim of an empty shot glass nervously. Finally… "Stupid Gryffindor."

"Mm," Harry agrees. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Same reason you are. I'm a cheap drunk."

Harry grins. "I should go," Malfoy says uncertainly.

"Don't."

Malfoy's lips twitch. "Okay."

"So I know what the papers say happened to you after the war, but…"

"Ah – so this is what you were after. Going to sell me out to the rag that bids the highest price for the latest Malfoy scandal?"

"Absolutely."

The blonde grins sleepily. But he sobers quickly. He bites his bottom lip, but honesty seems to win out over whatever apprehension he might be feeling. "Afterward… I just couldn't think of a goddamn reason why I wanted to stay on this planet." Harry stills. Peers at him drunkenly. "It was like… everything kept going, you know? The world still spun, people still went to work, and everything started to go back to normal. But not me. Never me. It was like I was still suspended in time. After a while, I just went numb. And when you can't feel anything, eventually you'll do whatever it takes just to feel _something_. To feel alive."

"So that's when…"

"That's when I started in with the heavy stuff, yeah. Ambria, mostly."

"Shit."

"Yeah, that stuff will knock you on your arse the first time, and it'll kill you if you let it. Unfortunately, my mother intervened. She did a piss poor job of protecting me up until that point. And by that time…" He shrugged and winced. "Well, there wasn't much to save, was there."

Harry pours himself another shot and tosses it back. Then, he pours Malfoy one as well. "Wasn't there?"

"No… I was too far down. The recovery was excruciating. The withdrawals… murder. Unbelievably fucking painful. But… you have to go there if you want to come back." His gaze levels with Harry's. "You know that better than anyone."

Harry thinks back to the long trek into the forest, that night Voldemort had called him. That night he'd thought he was walking to his death. And Harry wonders if that's what Malfoy felt like every single day during their sixth year.

"Did you start going downhill because of the guilt?" he asks, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

"No." Malfoy's voice is sharp, and it cuts through him. "Because I couldn't forget."

Harry takes a breath; he isn't sure he wants to know the answer to his next question. "Forget what?"

Malfoy seems to consider the question for a moment as though weighing the things he stands to lose if he answers it. What shame or, for that matter, _pride_ does a broken man really have? Finally, he settles instead for ignoring the question entirely and says in his usual lazy drawl, "Aren't you going to check and make sure I'm not going to bleed to death? You do seem set against the idea of my untimely demise."

The light that fills the room is sparse as Harry crosses it to sit on the edge of the chipped coffee table between them. His own pajama bottoms are worn at the knees through some habitual and slightly bizarre attachment to mundane things that don't, in all actuality, matter. It occurs to him as he sits there, unmoving and unwavering like a water-worn rock at the edge of the sea, that, after all he's been told tonight, the man in front of him does not ask to be happy.

He simply asks not to be in pain.

Harry swallows and reaches a hand out. Malfoy takes a deep breath and the sound rolls through Harry's body like a great wave that could both crush and calm him all at once. He runs a calloused finger over the jagged path the badly-healed cut carves over the blonde's right temple. He inhales sharply, and he can't tell if it's out of mild pain or something far more feverish and white-hot.

"I never asked for this," he whispers, and to Harry, it sounds like a desperate plea. He isn't entirely sure what he is referring to, if it's tonight, or everything, but he decides it doesn't much matter. No one asks for the things that alter them in ways that they could not anticipate had their life gone as planned. But it is those things that often times shape them the most, and mold them into diamonds, or crush them into dust left to the wind's errant path.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispers back. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" The two words are more of a prayer than those Harry might have ever uttered to any god. His thumb brushes over the purple-blue bruise that blossoms over the man's cheekbone, emboldened by the alcohol which pumps his heart faster and the adrenaline which pulses through his veins.

Malfoy's eyes flutter closed again. "It's not your fault." And it's the redemption and deliverance that Harry thinks he has been searching for all these years. "We should go to sleep. We have work tomorrow."

Harry's breathing is shallow but not erratic. He feels calm and peaceful, more so than he has in a very, very long time, and he thinks it is both strange and fitting that he should finally reach nirvana in the presence of Draco Malfoy. "Okay." It isn't judgmental, nor disappointed, because now, now that the war is over, all any of them have is time. It is both the worst poison and the best healing elixir that he can think of.

Malfoy rolls over to face the back of the couch, and Harry slips off of the table and to his own bed where his hand finds the waistband of his pajama bottoms, and his fingers find his cock. With pale cheekbones and dull, grey eyes which might have once been bright in his mind, he pleasures himself to ecstasy and back again. Creating these false illusions which cause full-grown men to cry out and their bodies to shake uncontrollably is singularly the most exhilarating and disappointing act a human being can perform, he thinks, just before he drops off to sleep.

When he wakes up, he finds his home empty and the sofa, even more so. Malfoy is gone, and Harry is left wondering if the night before and the feeling of his skin under fingertips is yet another sinful delusion.

If it is, he isn't sure he needs - or _wants_ - reality.

.oOo.

An hour later, he's in Blackwell's office again after being unpleasantly surprised by her Patronus in a very embarrassing state of dress. When he walked in, he _did_ notice a very unprofessional glint in the old bird's eyes before she got straight to business. He barely heard her. His attention instead was drawn to the window, because at some point, it had begun to snow. Apparating did not allow him to realize this and when he'd dressed in his dark, windowless room he'd not cared to check beyond his front door.

He watches the cold flakes fall against the backdrop of the slate grey sky as his boss drones on about the progress of the case, or indeed, the lack thereof. He had forgotten that Christmas was coming soon, and in some childish, cobwebby part of his brain, he's glad it will be white. The holidays used to speak of hope, a break from the feverish agitation of constant and impossible trials he had faced as a teen. Now, he's under no less scrutiny but far more honor for something he did, not because he was brave, but because he had no choice.

He and Malfoy aren't so different. Not really.

"Potter, if you'd like to join this conversation at any point in time, please feel absolutely free."

He jumps. "Sorry, I've been… _distracted_, lately. This case is far more complex than I had initially thought."

The graying lady purses her mouth tightly. "How so, Auror?"

"He's not as he seems."

She disapproves; he can see it in the line which furrows her brow and the way her kittenish blue eyes turn hard and unmoving, just like her opinion usually is once she's formed it. "He's a Malfoy. I doubt anything about him _is_."

Harry has to concede that she does have a point. "The things he's done in the past… he didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice, Potter."

"Like the ones the Death Eaters had to make? Giving a Muggle the Deathless Potion that made them stay alive while they inflicted the kind of torture that reduced them to nothing more than a boneless, bloodless lump of flesh, solely for Voldemorts entertainment… when the alternative was being Imperiused in order to kill their own wife, their own sons and daughters, for disobeying? I'm sorry, but that's not anything I would call a _choice_."

Blackwell is silent for a long moment, but she never takes her gaze off of him. He doesn't shift at all, and in fact, is quite proud of himself for standing up to the old broad after all the times she had torn into him with the fierceness of, yes, a woman scorned. He watches her quietly for a moment. Her backdrop is a bookcase with heavy books, most of which he doubts she's bothered to crack open, and certainly not to hear their spines break or to smell the new pages. She's not that kind of person. And Harry suddenly finds it unbearably sad that someone should go through life with so little soul. Life, he has realized, is meant to be _felt_. It's beautiful, and it hurts, but honestly, no one makes it out alive anyway, so how much does that really matter?

She clicks her tongue lightly and takes in a sharp breath. "I'm aware you want an argument. You always did, as a I recall from what I read of you while you were a schoolboy. Always seeking the next thing which would throw you in the spotlight once more." She pauses, he supposes, for dramatic effect. "But, I shan't give you that pleasure. You _will_ do your job, and you _will_ get me that evidence. _Do you understand?_" Her voice is calm and clipped, but venomous all the same. He can hear the poison in her words.

Harry grits his teeth, because it's un-fucking-believable that he's still experiencing this level of prejudice over the slanderous things that were printed about him as a boy. "Yes."

"Good. Now, I want you to talk to this Warthaw woman. Her name is Kira, I believe…?" Harry nods. "I think she knows more than she's letting on. See to it that you figure out whatever that might be, will you." It isn't a question, and Harry knows the conversation is over.

As he walks out of her office, he feels the fury that had long-since been dulled since his time in school, when people judged him for what he was, not _who_ he was. He thinks of Blackwell's wrinkled face, and pictures it smashing into a brick wall, tearing flesh and bone.

He thinks maybe that would show her what it feels like when she speaks to him.

.oOo.

By the time he leaves the Ministry, it's already past closing time for the shop, though he suspects that might be most suited for what he has to do. Kira's address is, of course, information he is privy to within the confines of the investigation, and he lands on her front step without hesitation. While his boss may want Malfoy's blood on her hands, another pair of crimson-stained gloves to add to her ever-growing collection, he did not save his life twice just to see it thrown away. In an instant, he sees a dash of crimson across white backdrop, as pure as the snow at his feet – Malfoy's penance for a crime he did not commit.

He raps his knuckles sharply on the door which is painted a deep forest green, and instantly, he is reminded of house pride and all the fanfare which accompanies it. Was Kira a Slytherin? He has no idea.

When it opens, he bows his head in an unspoken apology for the late hour and his black hair which he's let grow a little long sweeps across his cheeks. "Kira. Can I come in?" The woman is clad in pajama shorts and a tank top, which he supposes, if he were straight, might have some kind of effect on him. As it is, he barely registers her attire at all and instead focuses on her flushed face and the vein which twitches visibly in her left temple.

"Of course, Harry." She waves him in with a smile – he can't tell if it's forced or not – and he is gestured into the living room where he sits on a crimson-and-gold striped sofa. No Slytherin would ever own anything in those colors. He breathes a little easier for some reason, though a wave of apprehension rolls through him nonetheless. The woman does not make him uncertain in the slightest, but the information she might have _does_. Perhaps he was a poor judge of character, and the cold grey of Malfoy's eyes is nothing more than that – empty and emotionless. Perhaps he is a man capable of nightmarish deeds dark enough to keep children awake at night when they hear whispers of the war in corners of their school far from the watchful eyes of their professors.

He's been a victim all of his life. He'd hardly have to put on an act at all in order to be convincing.

He can feel the springs through the sofa's thin cushions as his eyes travel along the wooden inlays of the small side table next to him. He's being paranoid, and he knows it. He has no reason to distrust Malfoy. "Harry," Kira says gently, and his gaze finally crosses unbidden to hers, searching desperately for any sign that his doubt in the man this is all about is unreasonable.

Because he knows he has no reason to trust him either… not really. One night in which Malfoy had already felt vulnerable and hurt, and in which he told him a few truths, does not mean he has never told him a lie. But the idea of him telling a lie to his face, and somehow deviating a plan in which to escape the effects of Veritaserum simply to deceive him, makes him feel ill. The bile builds in his gut like acid that cuts straight through him. "Tell me that it's not true. Tell me that he's innocent." He's entirely too sober to be making such a plea, he decides, but he wants to hear it. Needs to hear it, even if it's a lie. Because in the end…

In the end, the truth doesn't always set you free, does it?

Kira leans forward with her forearms resting on her knees. A dark curtain of hair covers her face before she finally looks back up at him with an unreadable expression on her pale, lovely face. "I'm afraid I can't do that." Harry inhales sharply, and to anyone… to _her_… it might seem as though he's relieved in some way, but really, he simply can't catch his breath.

The snow hits the window across the room like tiny claws, taunting him. Reminding him that the things which are most beautiful can also be the most treacherous.

Reminding him of a man he'd almost allowed himself to trust. And not for the first time, Harry Potter feels like a fool, because he had forgotten the most important lesson he had learned of all as a much younger man.

Everyone… _everyone_… is capable of betrayal.

Because how well can you ever really know anyone? You can sit beside the same person for years and years. You can learn their habits from their morning routine, to their favorite book, to what sets them on fire and what makes them cry out in the night. You can learn about their worst fears, their dreams, and their goals. You can learn that they double-knot their shoelaces, that they prefer daisies over roses, or that they always forget to lock the front door behind them when they leave the house.

But when the truth comes out, sometimes you start to wonder if you ever really knew them at all.

Harry rises quickly and flees into the darkness like a fugitive escaping from the light.

.oOo.

_Please leave a review if you have the time! _


	5. Chapter 5

AN: This chapter contains a blowjob, agoraphobia, and plaid. Do enjoy. :)

.oOo.

Late, when the clouded London skies turn ashen, Harry finds himself chasing shadows in the dark. He lies awake, staring down the eggshell white ceiling above him as though it were the enemy, rather than all the things that make people human. Make them disappoint him. Make them fallible.

That make them impossible to trust.

These misanthropic thoughts swarm his mind as the doorbell chimes once. He ignores it. It chimes again. With a grunt, Harry pulls himself out of bed, clad only in his horrible plaid pajama bottoms which were worn at the knees, but are, _god_, so comfortable. He can't imagine who might be at the door, but finds it vaguely amusing that people still carry on with their own lives while he is at home, miserable. They go to their mundane jobs and then afterward, go out to have mundane conversations with their friends, and apparently, ring his doorbell at eleven o'clock at night to include him in their mundane lives.

Harry really wishes they wouldn't bother, to be honest.

He pads quietly through the dark hallways, his eyes dead but soft around the edges with fatigue. When he opens the door, however, and reveals the person standing on his front step, they light with something else entirely.

He studies the man who has darkened his doorstep for the second time with a bemused look on his face as the cold air hits his bare chest. "You haven't been in to work," Malfoy accuses. "Why?"

Harry hesitates. The blonde looks well, better than he has in days, and Harry wonders if he's used a glamour to conceal his disappointed eyes and his fury-creased face.

It's funny how a person who has been broken so many times in the past still appears whole. The hardest and the most painful cuts are the ones that aren't visible to the eye. Those cuts seem intent on festering quietly in a way that the person cannot show to anyone else, nor explain in a way someone else might understand. Who can really understand our struggles, unless they have gone through them with us? The answer, as it often is when it comes to struggles of the heart and mind, is that _no one_ can really understand. Healers can heal deep lacerations and erase the poison in someone's veins, but they haven't yet learned to heal the things that hurt the most and the longest.

"Been busy," he lies.

Malfoy blinks, his pale, pointed face posed in a look of pure composure. "I see." He pauses for a moment. "Invite me in, Potter."

Harry can't help it; he smiles. "What's the magic word?"

"Fuck you," he answers without skipping a beat.

"That's two." Harry meets the cool, grey gaze without blinking, then steps away down the carpeted hallway with a wave over his shoulder. "Come in." In a whirl of snow, the Malfoy enters and shuts the door, causing a wave of chilled air to roll through the house. He knows it's an absurd thought, but he wonders if it's possible to feel warm in the other man's presence.

He seems to carry winter with him wherever he goes.

"Ah – my old friend." Malfoy settles on the same striped sofa he'd slept on and looks round the room as though he's seeing it for the first time. It's a plain living room, sparsely decorated, and dimly lit. It's the epitome of a bachelor pad and makes it painfully, embarrassingly clear that he'd been living alone for far too long. There are men who chose to be alone out of some male streak of independence, and then there are men who live alone simply because the world has not dealt them the right cards just yet. Harry knows, much to his humiliation, that he falls in the latter category. "Kira's been missing you."

Harry hears the unspoken words in the gaps between the ones he's said out loud. _I've been missing you_. He's ashamed when his face breaks into a wide grin that betrays the warmth bubbling up in his chest. "An ex-Death Eater died today. Murdered."

Harry's smile fades and he stills as he sits on his old armchair. It smells strongly of smoke and coffee.

"And then another one died after that. Also murdered. Now forgive me for being so… _intrusive_, but Potter, I am sensing a pattern. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

Harry's heart sinks just slightly – he was here for his own self-preservation. It's just so _Malfoy_ to show up on his doorstep just to save his own skin, to protect the blood that ran through his own veins, just as poisonous in its purity as it is warm. "Well, I suspect you don't need a great deal more information from me to fill in the blanks."

Malfoy's lips twitch into an almost-smile. "Mm… very true. But you do understand why I am concerned?"

Harry nods.

Some of his resolve seems to slip away with this confirmation. "I can't… after everything… I can't. Not now." He looks up at Harry with a steely grey gaze. "What should I do?"

He bites his lip, feeling entirely foolish for having become so fixated on the fact that Malfoy seemed to have lied to him. He had become so fixated on it, that he'd rendered himself incapable of seeing past it, and had forgotten that Malfoy's life, much less his integrity, was in danger. It hung precariously from a single silver strand, and it was he who seemed to hold it steady now. "It'd be a waste of effort to let anything happen to you now, Malfoy," he said finally, heavily.

Malfoy settles his forearms on his knees, and bows his head. To Harry, it seems he has the whole world resting on his shoulders, a weight too heavy for any man much less for this frail creature sitting on his sofa. "Can't ask you to help me."

"You don't have to."

Malfoy peers up at Harry tiredly. "Such a fucking martyr." Harry only smiles. "I didn't tell you what I couldn't forget, last time I was here."

Harry waits. He seems to have endless patience when this man speaks.

He takes a deep breath before leaning back against the sofa. He takes his time as though he has an endless amount of time to sit here on Harry's couch and talk about his demons. When he does talk, it's a storyteller's voice, though it's oddly detached in spite of the fact that he is the story's main character, theme, and plot. "Abuse is often talked about, but rarely by the victim. Do you know why that is Harry?" He laughs. "I'm sure that you, of all people, _do_ know why. Because when something really hurts you, you don't talk about it. You keep it inside. And you know what happens when you keep that kind of anger, disappointment, and frustration inside? My mind healer tells me all the time. It turns into misery. And misery turns into depression. And from there, you have a one way ticket to insanity.

"I know what you're thinking. Poor little rich boy… spoiled and abused. I won't bore you with all the sordid details, but suffice to say that the first time I've let anyone touch me since then was the last time I was here."

His gaze levels with Harry's, and he refuses to look away, as though daring Harry to laugh. When he doesn't, he continues.

"I think I want you to do it again."

Harry's breath catches. "But I don't think I'm ready," Draco says. The fire which had flared up so suddenly in his chest, in spite of the damp chill that had settled there over the past few days, burned white-hot as his mind screamed at him not to let this chance slip away. He's never been able to find the words for things like this. Even while he'd been with Ginny, every declaration of love had always felt forced... fake.

But suddenly, he finds them.

"You can touch me. If you want." Harry looks at the blonde man. "Only if you want."

Malfoy stills, but he looks more alive than he has in days. "I want you to stand up."

Harry does.

Malfoy does in mirror, but he moves closer to Harry, while Harry stays still – unnaturally still. After a moment, he realizes he's forgotten to breathe until Malfoy's fingers run down his arm, and he lets out the breath he's been holding too quickly. The taller man smirks, then runs his fingers down his chest. They're cold, but somehow, at the same time, he realizes that he was wrong.

It _is_ possible to feel warm when Malfoy is in the room.

He knows an embarrassing flush is spreading over his cheeks and under the bridge of his glasses, which Malfoy takes great care in removing next. Everything over his shoulder is a blur, the bookcases, his certificates of achievement, and somehow he prefers it that way. Slender fingers rake through his hair, and he can hear the smile in the other man's voice. "Your hair is ridiculous…"

He senses rather than sees the other man round his body, but he hisses anyway at the feeling of his fingertips brushing over every single knot of his spine. He refuses to swear or say his name in case it scares him off, even though he can feel his prick straining at the thin fabric of his pajama pants.

But then the blonde brushes his mouth over his shoulder, and he can't help it. "Fuck," he whispers, because even though he's barely touching him at all, he can't remember the last time he was this hard. Malfoy chuckles and suddenly, he's standing in front of him again. The grey eyes are still their usual icy grey, but now, there's a certain warmth to them. "This has to be harassment… seducing the Auror on your case…"

"Mm, well… if you want me to stop, just say the word…"

Harry doesn't.

Malfoy's hands find his hips and his thumbs press into the subtle 'V' next to them. Fingers graze over his waistband. "Can I?" Harry can only nod, and Malfoy is sliding off his ratty pajamas until they pool at his feet. The tip of his cock is already slick, and glistens obscenely in the dimly lit room. More color rises to his cheeks as Malfoy utters a single, reverent word as he looks over him from head to toe. "Beautiful."

He gasps as his fingers graze his cock. "Want me to…?" He gestures vaguely. Malfoy's wearing jeans – tailored obviously – but he can still make out his clear erection pushing against the zipper.

Malfoy shakes his head quickly and this time, it's his cheeks that flush. "Let me take care of you. I want to make you feel good. I know I can." His gaze pierces Harry's soul and he bites his bottom lip.

He doesn't take his eyes off of Harry's as he sinks to his knees, and his hands down stray from his hips. Harry bites back a gasp, because it's clear that this man in front of him wants him so, _so_ much, and its intoxicating. And anyone who thinks that Harry is the one in control here is very much mistaken.

Malfoy's lips kiss the head of his cock and Harry lets his head fall back with a soft moan; he can't help it. "Please…"

He knows Malfoy is smirking as his lips sink down around him one centimeter at a time. By the time he takes him as far as he can, Harry is nearly crying with a heady mixture of pleasure and desire. His rough, calloused hands thread through Malfoy's fair hair and pull lightly; he can't help that either. He's so far gone that he isn't sure his actions even belong to him anymore.

"Eager, are we?" Malfoy pulls back breathlessly and peers up at him with a wicked smirk, and Harry knows without a doubt that he is _definitely_ not winning this game.

"Can you blame me?" He's dying to see the blonde's pretty little mouth around his cock again, and as if on cue, Malfoy lowers his head again, but not before he breathes one more thing.

"Say my name when you come down my throat."

And he does, like a whispered hallelujah. "_Draco_…" he says hoarsely just before he loses himself.

"_Draco…_"

.oOo.

The next morning, Harry woke up in his own bed, afraid that Draco (because somehow, overnight, he'd become _Draco_ rather than _Malfoy_) had already had left. But when he walks into the kitchen, he finds him sitting leisurely in one of his chairs, at his table, drinking his coffee, and reading his newspaper. " 'Lo," he murmurs casually, without taking his eyes off of the printed page.

"Er… aren't you late to work?" Harry asks incredulously.

"Better loosen your hold on the obvious, love, before you accidentally wring its neck." He pauses, still without meeting Harry's eye, though Harry is suddenly very warm, all because he'd called him _love_… albeit facetiously. "Kira's taking care of the shop today. We're going to lunch and buying you some new clothes that don't make you look like you've just walked out of a Gap advertisement," he atones conversationally.

Harry blinks. "What's wrong with the Gap?"

"Nothing, if you like looking as though you just stepped off the plane from the American Midwest, where ripped jeans qualify as haute couture and _plaid_ is considered _edgy_." He clips off the words with such venom that Harry doesn't dare disagree, though he does feel an irrational need to defend his plaid pajama bottoms. "Which I don't. And if you're going to be working for _me_, Potter, you better start dressing like it."

Harry looks over Draco, who seems to have summoned a new change of clothes from his home. He peers over the newspaper, finally, but only to give a disgusted sigh. "Stop staring before I gauge your eyes out for your impertinence. And go change. I _will_ be approving whatever you put on before we step foot in public."

Harry frowns; pouts, even, before heading back to his bedroom to do as instructed. Draco might have been the one on his knees that night before, but it takes no effort at all to see which one of them really thinks they have the world at their feet. All vulnerability seems to have evaporated from the blonde man's demeanor overnight, and Harry is… not thrown, exactly, because he'd expected it, but… _uncertain_. They get along well enough when Draco is feeling weak and low, but when he's on a high, Harry has no idea how they'll cope. Or how _he_ will cope. He's _barely_ tolerable when he's down and out, and Harry wonders what kind of pervert it makes him that he sort of enjoys it.

An hour later, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter can be found wandering among the common folk in Diagon Alley, and they both realize their mistake simultaneously. As if called out of their filthy, slimy holes by a change in the weather, the photographers and journalists descend on them like a hoard of bloodthirsty snakes. He's momentarily blinded by the flashes that leave pinpricks of light on the back of his eyelids.

And he's reminded of the old tale that a person's soul could be slowly stolen every time they had their picture taken, trapped forever in celluloid and film.

He doesn't doubt it; not when it comes to these relentless, hungry parasites.

Draco seems as though he's been thrown off balance, and Harry grabs onto his elbow on instinct. "Careful," he mutters, as the man looses his footing. He knows that in tomorrow's paper, they'll suggest that they are lovers, but he's long since stopped carrying about anything that Prophet says in its filthy folds.

"This is hardly the comeback I was imagining. I can just picture the headlines now. _Potter Saves Slytherin Prince_!"

"Your blood runs pure _and_ blue, does it?"

"Mm. When I get a cut, people try to catch the drops in vials and sell it on the black market."

Harry smiles, and a camera flashes cheerfully, the man behind it no doubt planning to use the word _besotted_ to describe it. "Thinking about tomorrow's papers make me sick up a little," he admits.

"Oh, I'm quite enjoying it. I'm wearing my new Dolce jacket."

Harry just stares at him.

Tomorrow's tabloids will read: _Potter and Malfoy: Thin Line Between Love and Hate_.

Shortly after, he's sure he'll get a very loud, very incensed fire-call from Molly Weasley. And as soon as he gets to work, he'll hear _exactly_ what poetic, purple prose the papers used to describe his eyes _this_ time.

Like glass shattering, it all falls to pieces in a split second when one of the journals, with Crazy Eyes, grabs onto Draco's arm.

"Get off of me!" he screams. "Get the FUCK off of me!"

It strikes Harry as strange that someone who possesses so much composure can lose it all in a moment's time. It occurs to him that perhaps he doesn't possess it, as much as he wears it like a mask, which slips from time to time.

Deception is an art form, and Draco appears to be a fraud.

Harry, with his hand still on his elbow, steers him into the nearest building, which happens to be a coffee shop, conveniently enough. It occurs to him, with a burst of misplaced hope, that Draco hasn't reacted badly at all to the skin-on-skin contact with _him_. It was the parasitic journalist that he'd tried to shred with his razor-sharp tongue. He'd undoubtedly _still_ be trying if Harry hadn't pulled him away.

When they find their own table, far from the window, the shopkeeper kindly locks the front door to prevent any journalists from entering and interrupting. Harry thanks him, and the man nods congenially, apparently pleased to have helped the Wizarding World's Savior in some small way. These small favors both please Harry and make him feel a little ill.

Draco won't apologize. Harry knows this. Instead, the taller man simply rests his face in his hands and takes a few deep, apparently cleansing breaths.

"Fuck," he whispers tonelessly.

"Yeah," Harry says, with not much more life in his own voice.

"It's unbelievable, the lengths those people will go to just to get a sound byte. If I asked for their own flesh and blood in exchange for one, they'd probably do it without a second's thought." Draco lifts his head and presses his lips together as he looks off to the side.

"They're not to be taken seriously. They're just chasing their next paycheck." It's no excuse, but it _is_ a motive, albeit a selfish one, for what they do.

"So am I. But I do it without harassment, fuss, or mess."

"Well, I think we both know you're a bit classier than they," Harry observes quietly.

Draco smiles a little at that, and Harry gets a little thrill at knowing that he'd given him a reason to be happy, if even for a second. "I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, truly."

"Don't get used to it," he grins.

Draco shakes his head, but he's still smiling.

As the kindly shopkeeper slides two cups of steaming coffee in front of them, Draco wraps his hands around his mug, as though it's the only thing keeping him together. It's clear they're going to have to be there for quite a while, until the crowd outside the shop begins to thin. "Seems like we have some time on our hands," Harry says conversationally.

His eyes go a little distant and soft around the edges. "I could tell you some stories about me that'd make your hair stand on end," he pauses and grins, "if it didn't already."

Harry raises an eyebrow. "Any kid-friendly ones?"

"A few." Draco seems amused for a moment before he continues if a far more somber tone. "Do you know the story about Daedalus and Icarus?"

"Er…"

Draco waves a hand distractedly, though it goes immediately back to the ceramic cup. "It's a Pureblood tradition… teaching children about the old Greek myths. It's supposed to be instructional." He coughs, eyes still darting toward the photographers and journalists still standing guard in front of the shop, hoping to catch another glimpse of them. Harry reaches a hand across the table instinctively and grazes his fingertips over Draco's. Draco, surprisingly, doesn't flinch and doesn't pull away.

"Anyway, it's about Daedalus who killed his nephew, and tried to escape punishment. Icarus was his son. He travelled to Crete where King Minos welcomed him, and he built an elaborate labyrinth below the city out of gratitude. The bastard decided he didn't want anyone to know about the labyrinth, and imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus to protect his secret.

"But they tried to escape. They made frames and fastened feathers to them with wax. They learned to fly, but Daedalus warned his son not to fly to closely to the sun. When it was time to escape, Icarus became intoxicated with his sudden freedom and flew high – too high. The sun melted the wax, and his wings broke."

There was a long pause as Draco stared intently into his coffee, at the brown sludge that Harry doubted he'd drink.

"He died, but," Draco sets his lips in a thin line, "he died a free man."

It seems both odd and foreboding that Draco would bring up this story _now_, after his wellbeing has been called into question like this. "I hadn't heard that one," Harry says finally.

Draco shrugs and sighs. "It was never my favorite. It's funny… sometimes the memories that stick out to us aren't the ones that we would expect."

He thinks for a moment about seeing Draco holding his new broom, as the Seeker of the Slytherin team, looking smug and… _whole_. He wonders if Draco ever misses that boy and if he ever mourns for what he would inevitably become. "That's true," he says, in a coffee-soaked murmur of agreement.

"I think I'd prefer the same. Everyone dies – it's just a matter of if they do it with honor." Draco seems to be rambling, uncharacteristically enough, but Harry lets him without commenting on the fact. Draco smiles a little, apparently amused at his own morbidity. That, or he is attempting to make light of it. Either way, Harry feels a little uncertain, because Draco, not for the first time, is making him very nervous.

"I'd like to think that I'll meet Death, in the end, as an old friend," Harry says, reminded painfully of the story of the three brothers.

"Well, you would," Draco snorts. "It's us mere mortals who worry about the manner in which he will take us. It doesn't matter how pure your blood is, because in the end, it always runs red and thick, whether it comes from a thief or the Queen." He shakes his head. "This has turned into quite a somber shopping trip, I would say. It's not my style at all, I assure you."

Harry shrugs. "Perhaps we should just call it a day." Parading in front of Draco in designer jeans and overcoats was not his idea of a fun outing.

"Pity," he murmurs, almost to himself. "I was so hoping to see your arse in a pair of Armani jeans."

Then again… maybe it wouldn't have been _so_ bad.

.oOo.

Sitting across from Blackwell again, Harry has the alarming urge to overturn her inkwell just to provide some obviously much needed chaos to her life. He can't imagine why she's called him back to her prized office if only to check the temper of her department's Golden Boy. Contrary to popular belief, he knows he's not perfect, but rather, is a collection of flaws and defects that make him human. Perhaps it's more of a strength in a way, that he shows his emotions so freely, because he is reminded of a piece of advice he had been given very recently.

_And you know what happens when you keep that kind of anger, disappointment, and frustration inside? My mind healer tells me all the time. It turns into misery. And misery turns into depression. And from there, you have a one way ticket to insanity_.

"I'm removing you from the case, Potter."

…

_Breathe in._

Harry's spine goes ramrod straight, and his lips are set in a thin, unforgiving line. His mind is screaming at the injustice of the few words that she has spoken. Though it isn't necessarily a personal attack, it's more insulting than anything she's said to him in the past.

"You're too attached to it. It was my mistake putting you on it, with a preexisting relationship between the accused and yourself."

_Breathe out_.

"I suppose you've seen the papers, then," he replies tonelessly. He is bitter, but he feels well within his rights, because this is not the first time the papers have ruined something for him. And he's sure it won't be the last. The headlines that appeared that morning after the previous day's adventures had been just as gruesome as he'd imagined.

"That, Potter, is irrelevant." The old, graying woman purses her lips together that makes her look as though she's just taken a good long suck on a particularly sour lemon. "An investigation simply is no longer needed."

Harry presses the flats of his palms into his knees. "Meaning…?"

She smiles, and he hates her for it. "Why Potter, I thought you of all people would have read the paper you headlined."

He says nothing, but she seems incapable of preventing the venom from seeping into her words.

"Kira Warthaw has publically announced Borgin & Burkes involvement in the crime. We have an arrest warrant." She smiles wider before looking down at her paperwork, clearly dismissing him, but not before giving him one last command.

"I expect you to bring Draco Malfoy into custody before lunch." 

.oOo.

_Thanks for reading. Please leave a review. :)_


	6. Chapter 6

**AN:** This is a much shorter chapter than the previous ones, but I really feel like it shows off my writing style better than they have. It's packed with emotions. I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. :)

Please review if you can. I love hearing what my readers think!

.oOo.

_Day 1_

Harry stands outside the entrance to the holding cells feeling invariably miserable and absolutely sick to his stomach. He hears Draco hurling some imaginative, _colorful_ curses at the guard in front of his cell, inwardly pleading with him to stop. Nothing will help his cause at this point, particularly his approach to most conversations, and especially the way he spoke to the wizarding world's Golden Boy when he brought him in early in the day.

In fact, a fellow Auror had clapped him on the back when they'd brought him in with what was meant to be a comforting assurance. "Malfoy's a dead man, Potter."

Harry feels like he's going to be sick.

He'd shown up at Borgin & Burkes as commanded earlier in the day and had found Draco waiting for him at the counter with an uncharacteristic smile on his face. "_Hey_," he'd said, reaching for Harry's wrist to brush his fingers along his veins that pulsed with a rapid heartbeat. He'd leaned in for a kiss that Harry had denied him, quite efficiently, when he'd informed him that he was under arrest for possession of illegal substances. Draco's shoulders had fallen as though once again, he felt the weight of the world pressing down on them, and Harry felt like he'd done worse than Crucio'd him with his simple words that he'd had no choice but to say.

He walks away from the holding cells with his footsteps echoing dully off of the corridor walls. There are five days till the trial. Five days to find the information he needs.

Five days to save Draco Malfoy.

.oOo.

_Day 2_

The Auror stands before his window and draws back the curtain. There had been a full moon two nights before but tonight, the sky was black with clouds. Behind him sits his desk which is littered with memorabilia of his own life – photographs of Hermione and Ron, drawings from his godson, and his Order of Merlin. Amidst that clutter are piles of parchment, all of which refer to Draco's case, his full name printed clearly at the top of each. He's spent hours on end searching through them for clues that would clear that name, but he's been unable to find any. In fact, the more he searches, the more he realized that Blackwell was well within her rights to arrest him, even without concrete evidence.

"Harry." He turns at the sound of a familiar voice. Hermione's soft brown eyes look over him with concern, and he realizes belatedly that he must look as wretched as he feels. He's not slept nor has he eaten since he arrested Draco. "Seamus told me you haven't left your office."

Harry shakes his head. "Seamus never did know how to mind his own business."

"We're worried."

"Don't be."

Hermione looks sad. "Easier said than done. I hate that he's gotten under your skin like this…"

Harry looks down, thinking about the way he feels when Draco is around. He thinks about the way it feels like he is on fire, like he's _alive_ for the very first time since he broke up with Ginny. He thinks about how vulnerable and small he looks when he's being honest, the worst part of which is that Harry knows there's nothing in the world that he can say to make it better.

And if that is what it feels like, then _yes_, Draco has gotten under his skin.

He doesn't hate it at all.

.oOo.

_Day 3_

He _does_ hate the way that, when he visits Draco's cell, he doesn't look at him at all. Instead, he studies his pale, clasped hands intently as though Harry is nothing more than a ghost that he can't exorcise. Perhaps, Harry thinks melodramatically, perhaps it would be better if he did just disappear entirely, like so much smoke into thin air. Harry has visited him every single day and stays for an entire hour, though neither of them say a word. One of them doesn't speak out of betrayal. The other doesn't speak out of shame.

Harry hates the way he sits on the cold, grey slab attached to the cement wall. He knows he has nothing more than a thin wool blanket to ward off the chill at night. He hates the way he seems to have given up. He doesn't bother to hurl obscenities at the guards any longer and instead, accepts his meals at lunch and dinnertime quietly, as though he's already accepted defeat.

He hates the way his hair hangs limp over his face so he can't see his eyes. He hates the way he might never get to see them light up again. He hates the way he might never get the chance to kiss them closed. He hates the way he might never get to make this man smile again. He hates the way he might never get to run his hands through his hair. He hates the way he might never get to press his fingertips into his waist in a way that means he belongs to _him_.

"I brought you some cigarettes." These are the first words he says to Draco since he had arrested him. He slides the package through the iron bars and leaves them on the ground where Draco can reach them.

He hates the way it is still there, untouched, when he comes back a few hours later.

.oOo.

_Day 4_

Harry can't stop shivering. His coffee seems icy when he fills his cup in the morning, and his office seems bitterly cold, no matter how many layers of clothes he puts on. He thinks about Draco waking up alone in his cell with even less than he has, and shivers some more. His hands are frozen as the flip through page after page trying to find the evidence he needs to free that man, regardless of the fact that it is no longer his case nor is it his business. When his eyes move over his Order of Merlin, he remembers why he shouldn't care.

He remembers how the Death Eaters thrived on other's suffering, reveling in the innocent blood they spilled.

Some of that blood is on Draco's hands.

He remembers them watching him and his friends, studying their movements, and occasionally – just to maintain a certain level of terror – killing one of them.

Some of that blood is on Draco's hands.

The memories that haunt him just as he haunts Draco's cell plague him with nightmares and endless questions of who the blame truly lay with. The empty eyes of Fred, Remus, Tonks… even Sirius… were partially his fault for not stopping the Death Eaters sooner. For not stopping Draco and his family sooner.

Yes, some of that blood is on Draco's hands.

But he refuses to have Draco's blood on his.

.oOo.

_Day 5_

He's begun counting down the hours to Draco's trial in his mind. When there are ten hours left, he is still staring blankly at the invoices from Borgin & Burkes. Everywhere he is hearing the voices, whether from the corridor outside his office or within his own mind. He can't really tell the difference.

_He's guilty._

When there are five hours left, he is looking through Draco's criminal background. He is guilty of using all three of the Unforgivable Curses during the war. Draco's father even Imperiused a Muggle mother to kill her own daughter. She sliced her to ribbons, and then she was forced to clean up the pieces of her only child.

_He's guilty._

When there is one hour left, he has resorted to pacing his office as the naked bulb above his desk hums an empty tune. The Malfoys have long since used their ancient family connections to keep them afloat during their tumultuous past. They have the financial means to have some sway over every stronghold in the wizarding world and have used it to their advantage on more than one occasion. They are the champions of a power system that they themselves have created for their own purposes. Malfoys are masters of manipulation and as a result, Malfoy's are survivors.

_He's guilty._

When there is ten minutes left, Harry is sprinting down the corridor to the chambers where the trial will be held. There's a piece of the puzzle that he is missing, that everyone is missing, and he must find it. Conveniently enough, he finds it when his eyes light on Kira and everything falls into place with an almost audible _click_. For when he uses Prior Incantatum on her wand before she crosses the threshold of the courtroom, as Aurors are within their rights to do, he finds something that shocks everyone in their vicinity.

There, shimmering in the air in front of him, is the answer he's been looking for.

And for the first time all day, he allows himself to think something that he'd begun to believe was hopeless. He's ashamed of his lack of faith.

_He's not guilty._


	7. Chapter 7

**AN:** I had some trouble with this chapter. I hit a bit of a wall near the middle, which could be why it's so short. I'd be interested to hear about any predictions you have for the next chapter! :) We're close to the end now… only two or so more chapters to go!

.oOo.

The proof is irrefutable. Kira has been using the Imperio Curse on Draco.

After the initial stir Harry had caused, the rest of the trial passes in a blur. Harry stands near the back as each of the accusations against the blonde are dismissed. He watches Draco stand with his back ramrod straight and his slate grey eyes focus on an imaginary spot somewhere next to the Minister's head. He doesn't seem pleased, but he doesn't seem surprised either. Harry supposes that's what happens when one gets accustomed to everyone stabbing them in the back.

Eventually, they stop seeing it as an act of betrayal and start seeing it as an act of human nature.

Slowly, as more information surfaces, the picture becomes clearer. Apparently Kira's magic had been too inadequate to keep him constantly under her control and instead, had simply used him as her puppet for short spells to do her dirty work. Draco admits, in a voice that sounds hollow and drained, that there are periods of the past few months in which he can't remember where he had been or what he had been doing. He admits – and anyone could tell it was costing him everything – that he had periods in which he experienced an unexplainable amount of resentment toward Harry. He had periods in which he felt as though he could _murder_ Harry. That too is dismissed as the effects of the curse.

Once every single charge against Draco has been dropped, Harry meets Blackwell's eyes from across the room – they are black with murder. The hell-bent old bird won't be getting Draco's pretty little head on a platter after all, but she looks like she'd be willing to cut it off herself anyway, and repaint the Ministry with his blood. In a way, he feels that he can sympathize. He feels murderous too, but not for the same reasons.

The Minister calls a recess and dismisses Draco; he is free to go. And he does, without hesitation, without a word, and without looking at Harry. It feels like the beginning of a storm, with the soft pitter-patter of the rain against the pavement, steadily speeding up...

And you know you have no choice but to wait it out.

Harry follows him out into the corridors and watches him go with his shoulders back and his head held high. No one would know that he was broken at all, but Harry can still hear the hollow voice, and see the empty grey eyes. He's as fragile as a baby bird. "Draco!" he shouts. "Wait, please…" He takes a few steps, but stops when Draco does not so much as hesitate at the sound of his voice. It isn't as though he's been given a sign. Sometimes, there are no mixed signals, no reading between the lines… Sometimes things really are as black and white as they seem. Draco does not want to talk to him, does not forgive him, and does not want to be with him.

Harry swears he can hear the rain reach its crescendo.

.oOo.

The funny thing about having someone, even if it's only for a day, is that it makes you feel like life is so much… _less_ when they're gone. You can't have realized it before you had them, but as soon as you do, you realize that you had been living a life that was a mockery of what it really should be... or what it _could_ be. You can be content, but as soon as you meet them and as soon as you lose them, you realize _content_ is not enough.

These are the melodramatic musings of one Harry Potter late on a Sunday night.

The weekend has passed uneventfully. He's spend most of it trying to compose a letter to Draco, and he still is. Trying, anyway. The debris of his efforts lays crumpled around his armchair, with the ink smeared hopelessly on the parchment, wasted, just like his words were while watching Draco walk away. It's stupid, truly stupid, to be worried for even a second about a man who probably doesn't worry about him at all, but Harry has never been able to help the way he feels. It's always been his one shortcoming, his weakness for his own feelings.

It was what had driven him to the Department of Ministries and into Voldemort's trap when he'd been a fifth year after all.

He pours himself a tumbler of scotch and takes it back to his armchair. He lifts his arms over his head and stretches. His shoulder cracks. Outside, one of the trees scratch at the window and he stares at the darkness as though he could make it out. After a minute, he picks up the quill again and stares at the blank parchment.

An hour later, he does it all again.

Two hours later, he's completely pissed and the words are starting to run together whether by his own hand or his blurring eyesight. In his drunken stupor, he pens two words, rolls up the parchment, and ties it to his owl's leg before sending it out into the night. What seems like a million miles away, Draco will open it and find both a prayer and a petition written across it.

_I'm sorry._

.oOo.

The next morning, Draco's reply is waiting for him on the kitchen table. The bastard hasn't even bothered to get a fresh piece of paper but instead has penned his reply on the back of Harry's letter. With his eyes still blurry from a combination of a hangover and sleep, Harry squints to make out the words.

_It doesn't matter_.

He can't figure out if the arsehole means that his apology doesn't matter, or if the thing he's apologizing for doesn't matter. He clings to the hope that it's the latter, but he doubts Draco is that forgiving. Harry swears under his breath and lights the damn thing on fire, though he immediately regrets it as Draco's handwriting disappears into ash and leaves a scorch mark on his own table. He grabs the still smoldering remains and burns his fingers. He drops the letter. Swears again.

He tries to occupy his mind with his own banging around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers to find the ingredients he needs for a hangover potion. His organization… or lack thereof… is ridiculous. The silverware drawer has no dividers, so when he opens it, the forks and spoons clink together in a tangled mess. He throws them in there right after he's done cleaning them in the sink. When he slams the drawer shut, he hears all of the utensils slide to the back of the drawer with a metallic thunk.

Draco Malfoy is a bastard.

It isn't his fault that he fell in with the wrong sort of person, that he _hired_ the wrong sort of person, and yet, here he is, feeling apologetic for Draco's mistakes. All he had done was his _job_. All he had done was what was expected of him, just as he always had.

He takes the potion in one gulp, makes a face, and calls in sick to work. He's never called in sick before.

.oOo.

Another attack calls him back to Knockturn Alley, and he walks down the familiar street with his eyes downcast and yet alert. A shop sign creaks on its hinges and a man bumps his shoulder as he passes. It is just as friendly as the first time he walked down it as a boy.

As he approaches the meeting spot, his hand rests loosely on the hilt of his wand – loose enough to keep it close, but not tight enough to cause anyone alarm. The last thing he wants is to scare anyone away. "Mulholland." He studies the other Auror cautiously. Lately, he's been looking over his shoulder so much, he's surprised he hasn't gotten whiplash.

The other man gestures fluidly with his hand and Harry follows him down a narrow alleyway. He knows they're close to the body when the thick, metallic scent of blood reaches his nostrils, clouding his sense. No matter how much of his own he spills, seeing other people's blossoming out of their chest still makes him feel a little nauseous. It's a secret that many Auror's share. They never really become desensitized. Harry supposes that's the only thing that sets them apart from the people they hunt, because at the end of the day, they're both killers.

Their motives are just a little different.

He studies the body. "Christ."

Mulholland doesn't say anything, nor does he need to. The victim's arm is slick with blood and the flesh is torn. Ragged. The murderer's cut out the poor bastard's Dark Mark.

"This is the third one," Mulholland murmurs needlessly over his shoulder.

Harry knows there's only so many Death Eaters they can target before they go after _his_ Death Eater again. The raven-haired man presses his lips together and runs his hand over his jaw. He thinks he might be sick.

"This is the last one," Harry corrects.

.oOo.

Shards of bright sunlight littered the ground as he walks along Knockturn the next day. It dapples the cobblestones with unexpected, almost fluorescent color. He wonders how the light gets in to place that has been so shrouded in darkness for centuries, if not longer. He takes a moment to lean against a dirt-smudged shop front to work up the nerve he needs to walk into Borgin & Burkes, though he doesn't really think there's enough time in the world for him to do that.

He studies the outline of the shop with a sharp eye, taking in the small rectangular windows that were positioned at equal distances along the top of Draco's shop. He knew, of course, that they did little to illuminate anything in the shop. The entire place seemed to be one big shadow once inside. He supposes that, right now, lighting is not one of Draco's top priorities anyway, nor has it ever been.

He takes the first few tentative steps toward the front door, remembering the first time he had done so, and the long conversation he'd had with the doorknob before he had entered. This time, he doubts he'll be greeted in the same manner, as he suspects that was Draco in a _good_ mood. Surely now, he is just as dour and harsh as he had been during their sixth year, when he'd been doing Voldemort's dirty work in order to save his own skin… and his family's. There's something redeeming about the latter, but only a little bit.

When he finally pushes the door open, the sight of the blonde makes him freeze.

Draco looks up but not at Harry. His eyes look haunted and drained. "Have you come to kill me before they do?"

He grabs a knife, and holds it out with the hilt facing Harry with a strange, crazed smile on his lips. He's seen that look before – it's the look a man wears when he knows he is going to die and there is nothing he can do about it. Dust motes float lazily in a stream of light that pours through one of the windows Harry had seen from outside and glint like golden specks in the drab interior of the shop. "No one's going to kill you."

Draco laughs; it sounds empty and hollow, and makes Harry's heart ache. "Who will stop them?"

"I will. Do you need me to keep watch during the day? I'll stay over at yours and make sure the manor is safe, if you like." Harry is aware that he sounds a little foolish making these hefty offers that he knows Draco would never accept in a million years, even if he knew it would be the only thing between him and death.

The shop owner peers down at his fingernails which are chipped and the skin around them looks red and angry, as though he's been picking at it. "We've been doing this dance for years, Death and I. I'm tired of it. So fucking tired."

Harry starts to feel slightly desperate, because while yes, Draco is talking to him, this is the empty shell of the man he had known a few days before. He has to wonder how much of it is his fault. He has to wonder what he could have done to keep Draco from giving up like this. His dry wit, his scathing remarks are gone now and in their place is this defeat… this surrender.

"Draco, what do you want me to do?"

He turns away, and Harry realizes for the first time that he hasn't looked at him at all since he has arrived. "Leave me alone. Please."

Harry closes his eyes and he turns to leave, because what choice does he have but to respect the wishes of a dying man?

He only admits to himself later that he left the door open behind him in the hopes that Draco would call him back.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: **I wanted to quickly thank those readers who make sure to leave a review after every chapter. I know there are people reading, but it's always nice to see your support or comments in print. It's more energizing than caffeine! :]

.oOo.

Harry stares down the empty white sheet of paper until he has to look away and blink. He's been trying to compose a letter to Draco but, if the blank parchment is any indication, he's had no luck. Words are hard to find when he knows nothing he could say would change things, or make things better.

Suddenly, he sits up a little straighter. Perhaps there is something he could _do_.

He knows what it's like to feel hopelessly hollow. He was there for the months leading up to the Battle at Hogwarts. The only thing that had kept him going was the fact that he had friends who wanted to see him come out of it alive and who would give their lives for his. Draco deserves to have the same thing pulling him out of the carnage and the wreckage. It doesn't even have to be Harry, but he doesn't see anyone else rushing forward to sign up for the job.

He's not complaining, because secretly… selfishly… he wants it to be him.

The plan is simple, but it gives him a deadline, and he's always worked best under pressure. Every Friday for the next month, he will meet Draco at work, speak to him, and try to convince him that his intentions are good. There are four Fridays in a month which means he has exactly four chances to make Draco trust him again. If he can't do that, he thinks that giving him something to think about for the entire week other than masked vigilantes will make it worth his time anyway.

Losing simply isn't an option and, though he's never been a betting man, Harry decides that he likes his chances. Of course, he would prefer that things go back to the way they were before the trial, but it seems that he has already lost that chance and lost his momentum. A wave of shame washes over him again, threatening to drown him. But he won't let it, because yes, he does have a thing about saving people. He can practically hear Malfoy's petulant growl in his mind. _Bloody Gryffindor_.

The next day is Friday, so of course, he spends the rest of Thursday tormenting himself with thoughts of what might happen if Draco asks him to leave right away. Perhaps he ought to stay anyway, against his better judgment. Then again, it might be safer for all parties involved if they just went their separate ways and wished each other well, though he can't imagine Draco wishing _anyone_ anything other than ill. He supposes that, despite everything, he is still an idealist. If a Dark Lord on a rampage and several dozens of masked men trying to kill him for seven years hasn't squashed it out of him, he suspects that his foolishly optimistic temperament is sticking around for good.

When Friday morning _does_ finally roll around, he meets it with a certain amount of trepidation but courageously nonetheless. The trip to Borgin & Burkes is uneventful and pleasant enough, but the look on Draco's face when he arrives is anything but.

He had expected it, of course, but it was still nearly enough to make him turn on his heels and leave without a second thought. _Gryffindor indeed_, he thinks derisively.

"Hey," he says helpfully… weakly.

Draco looks back at the book lying open on the counter, and Harry prays it doesn't contain some kind of banishing curse. Or worse. "Odd," he muses, almost to himself. "I could have sworn that I'd asked you to leave me alone. Shall I try again in Spanish?"

_Well,_ Harry thinks, _at least he's talking._ "Do you know Spanish?"

There's a twitch of an almost-smile on his lips. "No, I'm fluent in sarcasm, with a close following of English."

"Ah," Harry murmurs with an almost-smile of his own. He feels a funny jolt somewhere in his stomach which makes him want to both laugh and sick up at the same time. "I… suppose I should apologize for intruding, but I wanted to see you again. I'd gotten used to seeing you every day."

Draco sighs. "Yes, I suppose that _is_ a difficult habit to break. Perhaps taking a picture would suffice?"

Harry laughs. "No, I don't think that would work. I was rather hoping that you'd give me a second chance, instead." A silence falls over them for the first time since he'd stepped inside the shop, and Harry immediately wishes he could take his silly wish back so they can keep talking about safe things, like wool socks and tea. Anything would be better than this horrible stillness, which he finds stifling in the most ridiculous way.

"I'm afraid it goes against my admittedly limited morals to do so," Draco says breezily, as though they _are_ discussing wool socks and tea. "You see, I had promised myself long ago that I'd focus on things that are important to me and forget the complications which threaten to interrupt my otherwise peaceful existence." He pauses before looking directly at Harry. "You sir, have become a complication."

Harry, oddly enough, finds some hope in this somewhat strange explanation. "I want to give you an opportunity to change your mind. I'll be back, Draco, because everyone deserves a second chance," he says with a meaningful look. Draco however, seems rather nonplussed by his speech. "I just wanted to see you," Harry says, his voice somewhat strained.

"Consider myself seen. Have a good weekend, Potter." Harry has to hand it to him; the man does know how to end a conversation. He leaves without a word, though already, he finds himself looking forward to the next Friday, and the Friday after that. He is a difficult man, but Harry is as well, for he has never made it a habit to give up on things that he thinks are necessary. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't intend to start now, whether Draco Malfoy likes it or not.

.oOo.

Things are quiet on the crime front – eerily so, in fact, and Harry can tell he isn't the only Auror who is feeling on edge because of it. He's taken to filing Things Which Need Filing just so he can have something to do. Finnegan's taken to cleaning out the coffeemaker almost obsessively, to the point where Thomas has to hide it from him under the sink in the men's loo. They're all a bit jittery, so it's no surprise that by the time Friday rolls around, he's honest to god twitching in his seat behind his desk, trying uselessly to focus on the notices in front of him.

It doesn't make any sense that the vigilantes have been so quiet, when it had seemed they had been preparing for their finale. Harry knows after a lifetime of fighting people behind masks that they never just stop unless they are waiting for something, whether it be Dark Lords or prophecies or… whatever. In this case, he has absolutely no fucking idea, and the fact is unsettling, especially with Draco still walking around unprotected.

_Stubborn git_, he thinks, wondering how long it'll take for Draco to notice if Harry just starts hanging around the outskirts of his property just in case they try something.

By the time he reaches Borgin & Burkes, he's nearly convinced himself that the bloke really has gotten himself offed. It wouldn't be difficult, what with the door practically wide open. The man has a god damn target on his back.

Harry is prepared for the snide comment when he steps inside the shop again but rather less so for the sensation of stepping through wards so thick, he's surprised he's made it through with all of his limbs still intact. "Interesting… I designed those to keep out scum and maggots who sell out their lovers. My spell work seems to be a bit lacking of late," Draco drawls.

It's par for the course, really, but Harry still thinks it's a little harsh. Even coming from him. "I brought you a coffee," Harry says in reply. "I didn't know what you liked so I got it black, with a shot of civility… but I think they left that last part out."

"That's really clever. Your concern, your free coffees… no wonder I never saw it coming when you sliced me open. Oh, don't even bother apologizing… you already reek of sympathy. I ought to take you out back and hose it off of you. Now _there's_ something that would cheer me up…" He takes the coffee anyway and takes a sip without so much as wrinkling his nose. Harry is somehow amused.

"Your manners leave something to be desired," Harry says, mimicking Draco's posh manner of speaking.

He earns a short, derisive laugh from the blonde. "I find that I can more than make up for that in other ways." There eyes meet for a moment and Harry can see the same searing heat and desire in them that had kicked both their arses in gear the first time they had kissed. That's all it takes for him to know that Draco still wants him, even if he'd undoubtedly be the last to admit it.

An hour later after much of the same back and forth conversation (which is not so much a conversation as a constant stream of poorly veiled insults) Harry finally heads home. "Do you forgive me yet?" he asks at the door.

"Not a chance." But as Harry turns to go, he calls after him. "Potter…"

Harry turns. "Yeah?"

Draco smirks. "Next week, please remember that I like my coffee with sugar."

And the next week, Harry does.

.oOo.

On that fourth Friday of the month… the last time Harry had planned to ask Draco for another chance… he is swamped at work. Sightings of madmen in masks have been made, though no one can give them any details about the height or build of any of them. It's as though the lot of them are made of smoke, and judging by the way they stay out of sight, Harry doesn't doubt it. By the time he's finished shifting through the eyewitness accounts (all of which were useless) and the artist sketches (even more so), it's past closing time for Borgin & Burkes.

Harry stares at the clock for a long time before pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes and leaning as far back in his chair as he can. He's lost the chance to make things okay between him and Draco, and he knows it. Draco will think, in true Malfoy fashion, that he's given up on him, and he knows there will be no opportunity for a second chance. Draco will claim… in that terse, snobbish voice no less… that he isn't fool enough to trust him again, nor will he ever give him the pleasure of believing for a moment that Harry can change that. Harry wonders if he ever really had a chance.

Perhaps it is his fault. He was the one who refused to shake Draco's hand that first day at Hogwarts, opting instead to stay with Ron. He doesn't regret that, but he has been paying for it ever since. It seems that it is an impossible debt to repay, too great for any amount of time to change or fix. Fuck, Harry would give all of his awards and his accolades back just for Draco to offer him his hand again now.

It strikes him that he and Draco have had as long a relationship as the one he has with Ron or Hermione. Their path has been bloody, full of misunderstandings and hate that became so great, that he's certain neither of them can remember their reasons for it in the first place.

But he has stopped hating Draco without even consciously deciding to. While he'd been on the run from Voldemort, that hatred had morphed seamlessly into pity. He's sure that Draco would say that was no better than hate.

But now, it's changed again to something else entirely. Something just as damaging and frightening as hate, or pity, or any other emotion.

Harry thinks it really is a thin line between love and hate. And he thinks they have been dancing on it for years.

He feels like he's going mad, actually, because he knows it makes absolutely no sense, and that he should probably talk to Hermione about it, who can logic her way out of anything. Hermione, who has been cleaning up his messes for as long as he can remember. "Forget about him. Just forget about him," he instructs himself in a stern voice. There's persistence, and then there's… _this_. Who was that Muggle who had said it? _If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it._

"Talking to ourselves, are we, Potter?"

Harry looks up sharply and blinks because Draco is standing in front of him. Surely, he has really succumbed to madness now, and this is a hallucination. Draco, but not quite Draco, because nothing he could dream up would ever compare to the real thing. "You're here."

Draco smirks, as usual. "Ten points to Gryffindor. Yes, I am."

Harry sets his mouth in a thin line as he sits up properly. "Why?"

"Because it's fucking Friday, you daft git, and you didn't come by the store." Draco's eyes are travelling around his office, looking everywhere but at him. It must be a talent of some kind.

"Don't say anything yet," he says, as Harry opens his mouth. "I feel that I haven't been up front with you. But I need you to know that I don't expect anything from you. I know it doesn't seem that way, and I know – god, I think we both know – that I won't make anything easy for you. But every morning that I wake up and you're still there will be one more morning than I'm expecting you to stay.

I know you think I've been pissed with you, and I have. I was, anyway, for about a day. But I deserve what you did and more. But I'll tell you what I don't deserve. _You_. In all your messy-haired, absolutely abominably dressed glory, I don't deserve you. And I'm going to remember that every single day for however long you decide to stay, because I for one will not let myself forget, nor will the rest of the wizarding world. I can live with that. The question is, and always has been, can _you_? Nothing good can come of this. Not for you. I will manipulate you and make you wish you had never laid eyes on me every single day. I will make you want me and I will make you hate me. I will give you everything, nothing, and more."

Harry licks his lips dizzily, because the feeling coursing through his body is otherworldly. It's a mixture of desire, love, forgiveness, and yes, in a way, _hatred_.

With all of those emotions running through him and the knowledge that words had always defeated him, he stands and rounds the desk until he is in front of Draco. He cups his chin in his hand and studies those cool grey eyes with a crooked smile, feeling more calm than he had thought was possible after such a speech. And, feeling the happiest he had in a long time, he brushes his lips against Draco's. "Is this my second chance?" he whispers hoarsely.

"You can have as many chances as you want, you prick." Harry smiles against his lips, because it _is_ ridiculous, and mad, and it doesn't make sense, but at the same time, it is absolutely perfect.

.oOo.

After Draco had gone with the promise of meeting him the next day, Harry is still smiling like a fool at his empty office. He isn't quite fool enough to exit through the front with such a sappy grin on his face without expecting to endure at least a month's worth of ridicule from his fellow Aurors, so he decides to wait a while to ensure that everyone has gone home. He pulls out a chocolate bar, which he intends to have for dinner, when the door opens.

And he finds himself faced with one of the masked killers.

"Mr. Potter, it truly is an honor." The disembodied voice sails out of the slits in the mask as the man walks around his office, taking in its contents much as Draco had an hour before. Harry reaches for his wand, but before he can grasp its hilt, he finds the tip of the killer's wand under his chin. "You _are_ fast," the voice says admirably. "But not quite fast enough. We did know the only chance we'd get to chat was to catch you unawares. You are a _very _difficult man to get a hold of…"

"How did you get in?" Harry grinds out, his euphoria having already turned to rage.

"Let's just say we have some Ministry workers who are… _sympathetic_ to our cause. I'm sure you can understand _that_, can't you, Mr. Potter? After all, those monsters are half-responsible for your parents' _untimely_ deaths…"

"What do you want?"

"Ah! A man who gets straight to business. So refreshing. Not like the politicians upstairs…" The masked man takes that time to look directly at Harry for the first time, but all Harry sees are black, colorless eyes, devoid of emotion. Cold and empty, just as Voldemort's had been. "What we want is quite simple."

He knows what the request will be before it is made.

"Draco Malfoy." The masked man lifted his free hand apologetically. "Before you say anything… I'm sure you can agree his recent acquittal was _most_ regrettable and under the circumstances, I'm sure you can understand why we believe it to be our _duty_ to rid our society of the threat he poses."

By the time he finishes, Harry is seething. "And what exactly do you call what _you _have been doing? You murder these people who have already paid the price for their crimes. They murdered to save their families and their own lives, but _you_," he hisses, "what excuse do _you_ have? Fuck you. He is _mine_, and _I_… I will have the lot of you thrown in Azkaban. Make no mistake."

He is sure he hears a smile in the man's voice. "Ah, I have no doubt about that, Mr. Potter. Ever a servant of the law. I understand. But I'm afraid you have no choice." He coughs. "Forgive me, because in fact, you _do._ Bring us Draco Malfoy to this address," he slid a piece of paper with writing scrawled across it onto the desk between them, "or I'm afraid we must take something else from you by force. You are quite fond of Miss Granger, I believe…?"

The threat is clear. Harry growls. "Why don't you just take him yourself? Why do I need to deliver him to you?"

"Because he is, quite simply, _protected_. You know his family is one of the oldest and purest. That kind of magic is quite… impenetrable, while he is on his family's property which has grown to include Borgin & Burkes. He moves almost exclusively from his home to the shop. We can't get to him, I'm afraid, but you… you can bring him to us."

The man seems to take his silence as an agreement. "Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Potter. We will see you tomorrow night at eight o' clock." Just as quickly as he had arrived, the masked killer is gone, and Harry is left alone with only his thoughts knowing not for the first time in his life that he is faced with an impossible decision.


	9. Chapter 9

AN: This is the second to last chapter of Ashes to Ashes. With that in mind, I want to ask you to leave any prompts you might have for my next chapter either in a review or in a message. I'll be sure to credit you if I use an idea of yours.

.oOo.

The earth seems frozen as Harry trudges along the empty street, eyes lowered to the ground. He's memorized the route from the apparation point to Hermione and Ron's house to the point where he doesn't even have to look up. It's cold, colder than it has been in a long time, and he suspects this is their payback for an easy winter the year before. It reminds him of setting up camp in deserted parts of frozen forests trying to find Horcruxes, which had been a bit of a farce, really. They'd done less finding and more hiding. At least at first.

Perhaps things aren't so different now.

He'd been up all night thinking about the offer the fake Order member had presented with. Sleeping would have felt like he was spitting on the life he'd have to destroy the next day. Harry takes his glasses off and wipes them on his jacket sleeve, then puts them back on again. Hermione's been on him for years to get his eyes fixed via magic, and if not that, at least Muggle contacts. But there's a comfort he finds in wearing them. He likes remembering how many times they've been broken, and more importantly, how many times they've been put back together again. They've survived as much as he has.

Harry studies the front door for a second and shakes his head with a small frown. This will be a strange visit to be sure, and a short one, but his conscience can't rest easy until he's done it. His conscience had also made him disarm an Imperiused Stan Shunpike instead of stunning him high above London, which had almost gotten Hagrid killed, so he isn't sure how much he ought to trust it. Nonetheless, he is here, and he's still determined.

When Hermione opens the door, she widens her eyes slightly, though she doesn't look alarmed. Instead, she looks pleasantly surprised, and Harry remembers that's just one of the things he's always loved about her. She's transparent and easy to read. With Hermione, there are no mixed signals and no lies. "Harry, what are you doing here? I wasn't expecting you."

Harry studies her and takes in her wavy hair and her pale skin, and finds himself missing her, even though she's standing right in front of him. He steps forward and wraps his arms around her. He's always been a little inept when it comes to the softer range of emotions, so it's no surprise when the next words out of her mouth are: "Harry, what on earth is wrong?"

"Nothing," he says automatically, and he hopes that he's suddenly turned into a better liar since Draco told him he was an awful one. "I just wanted to see you."

Hermione pulls back and studies him with confusion etched across her pretty face. "Harry…"

And this is what it comes down to. Ron and Hermione have been the two people he could rely on through anything, Hermione most of all. All three of them still fight like hell, but Harry has come to think of that and love as kind of the same thing. If you're not fighting, then maybe you don't have anything worth fighting for, and he thinks that's far worse.

He certainly hopes that he has that right, because he and Draco have already done enough fighting to last them years. If it's not love, then he hates to think about what he's really making this sacrifice for. He studies Hermione's face, and the light that falls across it from the living room behind her. It's a crimson affair with a few Muggle paintings whose artists Harry has no doubt Hermione has researched within an inch of their lives. He almost considers asking her to list off what she's found out about them, just for old time's sake, and that's when he knows he's really lost it.

There are only a few hours left now, before he has to let those monsters know what his choice is. He feels the cold biting at his neck now and curses the fact that he's still wearing secondhand clothes that don't do anything to keep him warm. Old habits die hard, he supposes. He wonders if, once he's standing in front of those murderers, he'll be able to feel the cold at all. It's amazing how the human brain is so complex and yet is only capable of thinking about one problem at a time.

"I just wanted to come by and tell you thank you. You and Ron mean everything to me."

Hermione's face relaxes and she shakes her head, no doubt thinking that he's dipped into the liquor cabinet a little early in the day, or perhaps is feeling a little maudlin over the fact that they've lost so many people lately. He does tend to get that way after a few bad deaths that he couldn't stop. "Well, that's always been the problem, hasn't it? Everyone means so much to you that you don't leave any room to think about yourself."

_Bloody martyr_, he hears Draco's smug voice proclaim.

.oOo.

Draco is fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror when Harry gets back home. "I thought you might've skipped town. I was going to start going through your valuables in a minute." Harry slips into the bathroom behind him and catches his gaze in the mirror. He reaches a hand forward until it catches on his hip, amazed that Draco is letting him touch him like this, that he is allowed to. He bites his lip and rests his chin on his shoulder, drinking him in. He hadn't noticed but his features have evened out since school. They're graceful now, like he's been painted with an artist's brush, and every brushstroke is deliberate and perfect. He is silver to Harry's bronze.

Draco leans into him with a kittenish smile on his thin lips. The light of the bathroom is harsh, and it is rather cramped. Harry hadn't thought he'd ever need to share it, especially not with another man. "What are the plans for the night? I can tell Maurizio's to save a table for us if you want. My father favored it when he was…" _Alive_, Harry fills in for him silently.

"I have reservations for us somewhere else." Harry looks down guiltily at the eggshell white floor tiles. He isn't lying, not really, so he hopes Draco doesn't notice. He already knows Draco will never tell him what his tick is that tells him when he's bluffing. If he told him, Harry might learn to disguise it, and he knows Draco enjoys knowing when he's being force fed a lie. He's a glutton for punishment, apparently.

"I suppose I'm dressed decently enough for it?" Draco turns and snakes his arms around Harry's neck with a smug grin which says he already knows he is. He could arrive somewhere in a pillowcase and still charm their waitress into slipping her address under the receipt at the end of the meal.

"I like those robes," Harry confesses, though frankly, Draco could really be wearing a pillowcase and he'd still say the same thing.

"Mm, you should see me out of them." Draco smiles and nips his ear, and Harry can already feel his blood rushing to his groin. He hates that he might never get to feel how smooth Draco's shoulders are under his fingertips, or that he might never get to show Draco just how much he wants him, to make that desire tangible, touchable. He wonders if he can put off the impending meet just long enough… but no. There's no point in prolonging the inevitable. His guilt is already threatening to drown him completely, and he's certain it will if he waits even five minutes longer.

Harry kisses Draco slowly at first, until the desire between them grows to a fever pitch, and they pull apart gasping for breath. Harry studies him with half-lidded eyes and presses his lips against the soft patch of skin beneath his ear with a low murmur meant only for Draco. Had he been able to, he'd have seen Draco's eyes flutter close, his pale lashes sweeping his cheeks with desire. "Come on," Harry says, his jaw clenched in determination. He studies Draco's face intently before Disapparating both of them to the meeting point.

As they move through space, he tries to memorize that look of trust on Draco's face. He knows it might be the last time he sees it.

.oOo.

"Harry, what is this?"

Draco is looking around at their surroundings, suddenly anxious, as he should be. It's a Muggle shed that Harry's brought them to, and the air is nearly crackling with the amount of magic in it. It's clearly been glamoured so that the Muggles who own it won't notice anything strange happening inside of it, and he also notes that the space has been charmed so that one can Apparate into it, but not out of it. It seems that in spite of the masked man's flowery speech the night before, they don't trust him. And they shouldn't.

The appearance of the shed is a little run down, and the steal sidings are rusted with age. There are a few ragged holes punched through them, letting in sunshine which dapples the floor with eerie golden light. Farm equipment is pushed against the edges of the shed, and between them are workbenches littered with tarnished screwdrivers, hammers, and saws. The shadows make it difficult to see anyone who might be lurking in the corners, or behind the combines' sharp jaws.

"They'll be here any minute…" he murmurs distractedly. He turns and takes Draco's pale, confused face in his hands. "I need you to listen, and I need you to listen carefully. I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Okay? Promise me." Draco only nods with his grey eyes wide, though nothing else about him betrays his concern. Harry hates that he's had to bring him here, because he _has_ betrayed him, though perhaps not in the way one might expect. "Promise me," Harry says again, fiercely.

Draco shakes his head, his eyes shining with something indeterminable. "I promise, but…"

Harry hushes him quietly and brushes his thumbs along his cheeks tenderly. "They're coming for you. Yesterday, after they left, one of them came into my office and told me I had to give you up or they'd kill Hermione. I can't lose Hermione…" He looked down and bit his lip, unwilling to look Draco in the face after he had just admitted his duplicity. He'd turned over his options in his head over and over the night before, and each was just as horrifying as the last. But in the end, he'd known that there was only one person he was really willing to sacrifice.

"But I can't lose you either." He finally looks back up at Draco again, whose face has turned ghost-white. The blonde's hands twist in his shirt desperately as though he could keep him with him just by holding on tight enough.

"I don't understand," he says derisively with a hint of scorn, though his voice sounds like it's on the verge of breaking. His eyes search Harry's for any flicker of hope. Perhaps he is wishing this is a joke, or perhaps he is wishing he had never let Harry in to begin with. Whatever it is, Harry wishes he could give him it. But he can't. Not now. It's almost time, and it's too late to turn back, even if Harry had wanted to.

"They wouldn't come if I didn't bring you here. And you wouldn't have come if I had explained," he says quietly, willing Draco to see his plan so he won't have to say it out loud. He had no doubt that they had a Trace on the whole place, and knew exactly how many people apparated in. If he had come alone, they'd never have shown up, and Hermione's life would automatically be in danger. He keeps Draco's face still, forcing him to look at him. "But when they come… they won't find you. I have my invisibility cloak with me. You're going to be wearing it when they get here." Draco's lips are trembling again, reminding him of the scared little boy he'd always been in Hogwarts.

"Harry," his voice is unsteady as he chokes out his words. "They'll kill you."

"Probably." Harry tries to sound cheerful.

"I won't let you do this." The blonde's voice contains a hint of that self-righteousness Harry had always loathed when they'd been teenagers. "I just got my claws in you." He grins weakly and his hair hangs lank around his face. Harry brushes it back with his fingertips, noting simultaneously that the light splashed across the dirty cement is growing shorter. They don't have long now. He presses a chaste kiss against his forehead and shakes his head, attempting a wry grin in return.

"We both know I'm too good for you anyway," Harry murmurs. Draco snorts at his poor attempt at humor, and though his shoulders are still as straight as the first time they met, they're shaking. He sniffs and raises his chin haughtily, staring Harry in the eyes. "No, we're both leaving now, or I'm giving myself up. I can't let you save the world again, Potter. How would that make you look?"

He takes in those grey eyes and that pale, perfect skin wishing he could kiss it one more time. Instead, Harry looks down and whispers his last two words to his lover.

"Petrificus totalus."

.oOo.

When they arrive, Harry doesn't waste any precious energy on words. He is vastly outnumbered of course, and it would take a fool not to see who should be the victor here. There are five of them and one of him. As soon as he faces one, the rest of the murderers have clear aim on his back. Harry shoots off spells in rapid fire, one right after the other. The air seems to be set on fire with both the intensity and the volume of the spells being shot in the small shed somewhere in the English countryside, unbeknownst to the surrounding Muggles.

He manages to stun one long enough to put up a shield, and a red jet of light rebounds off of it, hitting its caster. The remaining three circle him like hawks, their black eyes peering out of the slits in their masks like burnt out coals. Harry keeps his wand up, consciously stopping himself from glancing at the place where he's hidden Draco. "We know he's here, Mr. Potter. Why don't you just save yourself all this trouble and give him to us? We truly did not intend to harm you. Indeed, that is the last thing we wanted."

Harry doesn't answer. Instead, he aims another spell at one of the masked figures, but misses. His spell collides with one of the work benches and breaks off one of the wooden legs, causing farm equipment and tools to come tumbling across the cement floor with a loud clang. One of the men takes advantage of the distraction and aims a cutting curse at his chest, and he feels his skin being ripped apart like an animal being slaughtered. His black robes stick to his chest as his life seeps out of him, every drop of blood like a piece of sand trickling out of an hourglass. His time is running out.

He remembers somehow, in the midst of the commotion, an old legend about three sisters who controlled the Fates. They gave each mortal a piece of string, and its length determined how long his life would be. And when he came to the end of it, they cut it in half. He closes his eyes for a split-second and swears he can see their shears hovering there, half-closed around his string.

But he isn't finished yet.

Harry clutches his chest, air whistling through his teeth as he bites down in an attempt to keep from crying out. His wand raises unsteadily, as he hears the biting laughter of the three remaining murderers. With a soft gesture of his hand, the tools rise up behind them and encircle them like a vice. The sight is unnerving. Each metal instrument is as sharp as a knife, but a knife is only as dangerous as the person who wields it. With Harry controlling them, he knows with certainty that they are poised to kill.

With a final flick of his wrist and an earsplitting scream, all five of the masked men lie dead on the ground. The cement is slick with their blood as it runs in thick rivulets toward the drain in the middle of the shed.

It takes him a moment to realize that some of it is _his_ blood.

He falls to the floor, with his vision turning black around the edges, as though Death is slowly taking his sight from him. He wants to laugh, because he remembers telling Draco he wants to meet Death as an equal, but this is far from it. He wills his eyes to close, wishing for the pain to be over but happy because Draco and Hermione are both safe. _He_ was the only one he was willing to sacrifice tonight, and now that he has, he can rest. His eyes finally drift closed and he sighs, almost in relief.

But if he had kept his eyes open just a little longer, he might have seen Draco running towards him, free from his spell, with Harry's name on his lips like a prayer.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN**: And we've come to the end. It's actually the first chaptered fic I've ever finished. This chapter is from Draco's POV.

.oOo.

"And that's for what happened to Harry Potter!"

I stare at the woman incredulously, currently standing drenched in a puddle of her own making. She looks to be in her early 60's, but it's always been the older ladies who've had a particular interest in the Chosen One. _Cougar_, I think, as I shudder irritably like a cat whose been forced into a bath. I'd hiss if I could. After some personal reflection, I've decided that run-ins like these end quickest if I simply shut up and pretend like I really _am_ a horrible cretin who stole Harry Potter's innocence like some harlot from the dodgy end of town.

Of course, it doesn't help that Harry Potter can't really speak up to defend either of us right now. In a way, that _is_ my fault, though I wasn't allowed to have a say in the matter.

That's something I'll never forgive him for, and I suspect I will never get the chance to, because he'd never admit that he was wrong. Even if he could. That bastard left me frozen on the dirty ground because he couldn't stand the thought of not saving the day again. I've entertained the thought that he simply didn't want to share the spotlight… that it was his name he wanted in the headlines, and his name alone. And then I remember the way he looked at me, and I know that even I can't pretend this was about his thirst for fame. Which, of course, (and I'm not proud to say it) I had needled him about endlessly when we'd been in school.

It seems like such a long time ago. I sigh, and turn to go with the woman still muttering to herself as she heads off to continue her shopping. People stare at me as I go, which they always do, but I suspect that now it has more to do with the fact I am currently soaked through and less to do with the fact that I corrupted their precious Golden Boy. Diagon is, of course, crowded with people today and the cobblestones are heavily shadowed with their presence. I'd come merely to grab something from the apothecary, but I've strangely lost the urge.

I don't have the stomach for other people's company even when I'm not in a mood. I liken crowds to hot dogs in that, you don't really know what is in them, and you probably don't _want_ to know.

I crisscross through the people until I reach a point where I can Disapparate safely, without accidentally taking someone with me. I don't trust myself to do that, not because I'm a poor at traveling, but because I might splinch them on purpose. They'd likely deserve it for grabbing on to me in the first place. Cheeky sods.

When I Apparate to Potter's house, the wards let me in without putting up a fuss. It's a novel experience, as most would reduce anyone with the Mark into cinders and ash within seconds. It's a bit of a hazard, walking into someplace new for the first time, let me tell you. I've had a few close scrapes and have singed my eyebrows and hair on more than one occasion. Oddly, no on ever apologizes. Apparently, that's one of the occupational hazards that comes with being a Death Eater – something the boss had deigned too insignificant to tell us about.

I've gotten quite handy at re-growing my hair with magic.

At any rate, if Potter doesn't want me there, he can't really tell me so. He can't say much of anything to anyone these days, given the circumstances. Of course, I have it on good authority that he probably doesn't mind, or at least, he certainly hadn't seemed to dislike my presence in his home prior to the fight. Then again, I know better than most that time changes everything.

One minute you're sitting at your father's desk pretending to be him, and the next, you want to burn it for what he did to your family. To _you_. I think most parents really do want the best for their children, but often times, it ends up being the absolute worst thing for them. There's a point when the kid has to figure out that he knows himself better than his parents and that his parents' happiness won't make _him_ happy. There's a point when you've got to be selfish.

As I walk through the living room with the infamous sofa upon I had slept like a wounded soldier a few months before, I think that this is the best thing that I have ever done for myself, and the fact that my parents would hate it only makes me feel more sure of myself. Because when I walk into the bedroom, Harry Potter is propped up with a few pillows and is staring at me with the type of devotion I have never known before. It's unnerving and it's frightening and it makes me want to run away as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

And yet, it's very right.

After the fight, the Healers had determined that he'd suffered some damage to his frontal lobe which hindered his ability to speak coherently. They had told me (albeit reluctantly) that it would take some time to for him to be able to communicate with anyone, and that he'd need to be surrounded with the people who care about him the most.

Granger, to her credit, had given me her full support in seeing to Harry. I told her that his muteness doesn't bother me. Strangely, a silent Harry Potter is just as good as a talking Harry Potter, if not better. I've always thought much of the human race could be improved if their ability to vocalize their thoughts were taken away.

But in his case, it's not that I don't want to hear his thoughts. It's that his eyes tell me all that I need to know.


End file.
